Using Dynamic Blocks and Tables - AutoCAD 2011 and AutoCAD LT 2011: No Experience Required - page 459

5. Write down the area in square feet to check against the number cal-
culated in the next section. Press ↵ to restart the Area option, enter
O ↵ , and then click the kitchen polyline.
The area should be 135.7674 square feet (12660810). Write down
this number. (You can round it to two decimal places; you just want
them to verify the numbers that AutoCAD will calculate.)
6. Repeat this process for the living room, where the area should be
278.5660 square feet (26201990). Write down 278.57 (26201990).
7. Repeat this process one last time for the front and back decks. The
areas should be 135.63 square feet (12648636) and 65.63 square feet
(6126516), respectively.
8. Thaw all the layers except A-ANNO-TTLB and make the A-ANNO-
TTLB-TEXT layer current.
NOTE the add and Subtract options in the area prompt allow you
to add together areas you have calculated and to subtract areas from each
other. If you're going to add or subtract areas, enter A ↵ after you start the
AREA command. then, after each calculation, you'll be given the add and
Subtract options. If you don't enter A at the beginning, you can make only
one calculation at a time.
To use the Properties palette to calculate an area, select the polyline to be
measured, open the Properties palette, and then scroll down to the Area readout
in the Geometry rollout. The area appears in square inches and square feet. This
also works for hatch patterns, which I'll cover in Chapter 11.
inserting the Room information Block
You have five areas calculated and recorded, and you are ready to insert the
A-ROOM-INFO block. When you inserted the grid symbols as blocks with attri-
butes earlier in this chapter, the prompts for the attribute text appeared in the
command window. With multiple attributes in a block, it's more convenient to
display all the prompts in a dialog box. Let's change the setting that makes the
dialog box replace the command prompts:
1. Enter ATTDIA ↵ . At the prompt, enter 1 ↵ . This allows the dialog box
containing the prompts to open during the insertion process.
2. Set the Node osnap to be the only one running, and make sure the
Object Snap button is turned on. The Node osnap snaps the cursor to
a point object.