Thursday

Getting area properties of solid surfaces.

Greetings,

One of our readera has sent me the following e-mail;

“I am new on the site yet, follow your articles with admiration. I have a question for you; I want to measure areas of surfaces of exploded solid objects. But I can not measure areas of those objects called surface. If it is possible yet, a program like AutoCAD should measure those areas; my job will be much easier. I would be very glad if you help me on this subject and I hope those succesful articles of yours will continue.”

The solid modeling subject in Autocad should be considered from a general point of view. It is not as succesful as the other 3D programs in the market. Yet you can get complex 3D models by using simple objects, you should consider other mechanical programs if Inventor is not sufficient for you.

However, there is an answer for Gökhan’s question. You can get area information when you explode the solid model and use list command for the output surfaces. For test purposes, I draw a simple object by using SUBTRACT command, explode it and be able to get the area property for surface with LIST command.

Figure.1 The surface area to be measured.

Figure.2 Area Information of the surface by using LIST command

Regards.