I am often faced with situations where I create closed polygons that will give me an erroneous or no area value. Sometimes the the area category is not even visible in quick properties or properties panels. This is very frustrating since area takeoffs are such a regular task for me. I understand from reading other forum posts that this happens typically when there is overlapping geometry or a "loop" in the polygon. However, practically it is often hard to find these errors. When I explode and remake the polylines the mistake is often remade. I'm sure geometry with lots of arcs makes this even more difficult and unfortunately I am always dealing with curvilinear geometry. Does anyone have any insight on what to do when you run into these scenarios (other than go through every vertex with a magnifying glass)?
I can sometimes hatch the polylines to get an area but I am hesitant to trust the values as hatch areas have their own quirks... for another topic another day.
HAPPY NEW YEARS!!!
By chance does LIST command, in lieu of your quicktip, give you an area or does it choke too?
Full AutoCAD, not LT, has tools to address overlapping entities: but if your outline was a Pline, sometimes the PEDIT>Close option can help, or even PEDIT command's ability to create a closed pline from lines/arcs with a 'fuzz' factor to leap across gaps.
LIST also gives me a value of 0, although it does have an accurate perimeter value (I think)
The boundary created polyline also gives me a 0 area. If I use boundary to create a region, however, the region does have an area value. Of course, if I try to explode the boundary and make a polyline from it, it reverts back to a 0 area.