Faster way to select multiple objects when finding the total combined area?

[Anonymous]

I'm inserting multiple blocks from other kitchen drawings, then to find the total area of all of the pieces, I have to use the AREA command, then Add area, then Object, and then I have to go and click on each piece individually to add up all of the individual pieces' areas.

Is there a faster way to select those individual pieces in order to find their total area? Maybe somehow using a window select or something?

[pendean]

Not in LT: that command sequence accepts only LAST or a selection.

You will need full AutoCAD and a LISP code to automate like this http://lee-mac.com/totallengthandarea.html

[steven-g · Accepted solution]

 A faster way of getting the full area, will depend on how your drawing is made up, so in an ideal situation you would have all the blocks alone in an empty area of the drawing, just copy them off to the side, you then draw a rectangle around them and setting a temporary layer as active maybe called "temp" run the boundary command with detect islands selected and set to create regions (not polyline), then click inside the rectangle but away from a blocks.

Now delete the rectangle and the new boundary from the drawing. Start the union command and select all the area around your blocks, union only works with regions and will automatically find them. Selecting any outline of one of the blocks should hightlight all the boundaries as these are now linked and the total area is given in the properties palette. Don't worry if there are extra regions created inside other regions these will all get merged together. You can now delete the copy of the blocks you made.

And if you already have polylines around the blocks then the region command will create the regions from these.

OK so thats the ideal if your blocks don't like being boundaried then could you post a copy of the drawing so someone can see if there is an easy way to get an outline of them.

[Anonymous]

Union command worked great followed up by AREA > Object, thanks for the tip.