Create a labeled surface with Area

Rhino
1

Working in the architecture field for sketch designs, I would need a quick way to assign a “dynamic” text which shows area and room typology to different surfaces.

OPTIONAL: it would be nice to export an excel chart of all the areas per tipology.

What are the possibilities?

P.S.I know the DimArea command but it feels clunky since everytime you copy a rectangle with its text it always refer to the original geometry and not the copied one.

2

use textfields. after you have created your surface call up text, then use the fx button and select your object then select area from the options and hit apply (twice) then click where you want that textfield to be dropped, it will be dynamic meaning if you change that surface in shape size etc it will automatically updated the value.

exporting i am afraid i have no idea how that could work, i suspect a script might do.

3

Thanks for your reply; indeed, this is a very good solution altough I find very frustrating that when applying a textfield to a surface and I copy them, the new textfield remain linked to the first shape.
Any workaround for this?

4

after scratching my head if that would be macroable, which i did not succeed in since i can not get access to the fx button maybe @Helvetosaur do you know how to make a macro to get to text field → area?

meanwhile i found something which could help to update the field to a new object with TestMatchAnnotationFields use it after you copied the surface/curve including the textfield and call this command then select the new object which it should be linked to. that unfortunately leaves in the mac version the old field behind which you might have to delete, maybe that looks different in windows, alternatively you can copy the surface/curve without the field then call that command and select the field then the new object, then you have to move the copied textfield over to the new object.

5

Hi Claudio - I don’t know how robust it is but this may help - you can select the area (CurveLength, Volume) text or leaders and copy them - the associated objects will also be copied and the text will look at the copied object.

CopyWithMeasurementTextField.py (4.1 KB)

To use the Python script use RunPythonScript, or a macro:

_-RunPythonScript "Full path to py file inside double-quotes"

-Pascal