Subtitles of the Movie

We're now going to look at the QuickCalc Tool available in AutoCAD. It's been around for a few years now, but what I really like about it is it's not just a calculator. It allows you to convert areas. We're currently working in millimeters, so everything we draw such as rooms, ponds, hardstandings and so on, their square area is in square millimeters, and really we need it in square meters to work effectively. Square millimeters are very cumbersome, especially when you get into the millions and the billions and so on. So what we've got here, we've got an Areas Table, and we've got a Gross Internal Floor Area. We've got a Kitchen Area, and a Garage Area. We'll look at the Pond and the Hardstanding later on as we work through the Course. However, we have a Polyline here for the Gross Internal Area. We have a Polyline here for the Kitchen, and a Polyline here for the Garage. So, what we're going to do now is we're going to utilize QuickCalc and some other tools to put these square meter values into the Table itself. So let's have a look at that now. We've got Gross Internal Floor Area first of all. So what I'm going to do here, I'm going to select the Polyline. I'm then going to right-click and go to Properties. Now the Properties Palette appears and as you can see, there's the area there in square meters, but it's showing as square millimeters right now. I can easily take back the decimal place there and try and calculate that back. It's roughly 38 square meters, but what we're going to do, we're going to use QuickCalc to do it for us. So we click on QuickCalc here; that brings up the QuickCalc dialog box, and as you can see, the value is automatically transposed here into the Calculation Line of the QuickCalc dialog box. So, I now right-click here and select Copy, and what I'm going to do, Unit Type is Area, so I click on the down arrow and select Area. Convert from square meters? No. I want to convert from square millimeters to square meters. If I now click on that value there I get the Calculator symbol, click on it, it takes it up to there. What I can now do is highlight that, right-click and copy that to the Windows Clipboard. I can close the Properties Palette for the moment Ð but I can't do that. I need to close QuickCalc first. It always takes over from any Palette that's already existing Ð so I close that, and I close the Properties. What I can do now is click, double-click here, right-click, and I can Paste that in and there's my 38.16375 square meters. So I now just hit Escape there now. Do I want to save those changes? Yes I do. So I've now got my square meterage there for the Gross Internal Floor Area. Let's have a look now at the Kitchen, this Polyline here. Now let's do this a slightly different way. What I can do here is I can cheat a little bit. I can actually go to here, to Measure, and I can select Area, for example, and what I could do is I could actually right-click, go to Object like this, and select that object there. However, because I'm working in millimeters it gives me an area in square millimeters, and I can't convert that. So what I have to do here is I have to exit that and come out of it, and again, it's the same process: click on the Polyline, right-click, Properties. There's the area there. So I click there, click on QuickCalc and it's the same process again. There's the value there, so I highlight it, I right-click and I copy it. Convert from Ð I want square millimeters again here, and it tells me that it's 5.925 square meters. I click there, click on the QuickCalc, it's up here in the box now, so I highlight it, right-click, Copy. I then close the QuickCalc, close the Properties Panel, like so, click in the Kitchen box here, so it's a double-click there, right-click, and I just paste it in and then press Escape, Save changes? Yes, thank you. So I now know the square meterage of my Kitchen as well. So what I can do here as well, quickly to the Garage, so it's click, right-click, Properties, there's the area there, I click there, click on QuickCalc, the value appears here. Again, I highlight, Copy, come down here, Convert from square millimeters to meters, there, I click there, click on the QuickCalc and again highlight and Copy. I can copy any time from that calculation bar at the top there. So I now Close, I close the Properties Palette there, click on the Garage box, double-click, right-click, and Paste, hit Escape, Yes to save changes, and I've calculated those areas very quickly. Now there are other ways of calculating areas. The reason I've done it this way is to show you how QuickCalc works and how easy it is to use. What we'll look at as we work through the Course are other ways and means of calculating areas and putting Tables of Areas into our drawing.