Not every room that you draw is going to be free from obstructions like columns or partial walls. If you have ever used the AREA command, you know how cool of a tool it is. It will tell you the area of an object in square units and will also tell you the perimeter of that area.

I ran into an instance today where I needed to find the area of a room but the room had columns/pillars in the room. Thank goodness AutoCAD thought of that common problem or I might have had to do some math on my own.

Here’s how:

(Note – I made a closed polyline of the perimeter of the room and also closed polylines for the columns prior to running the AREA command so that I can easily select an object instead of tracing the corners of the room.)

• AREA <enter>

OR – On the ribbon:

Home tab > Utilities panel > MEASUREGEOM drop-down list > AREA button.

Now that the AREA command is active look at the command line. You have options, and one of these options is “Add area.”

• A <enter> for the “Add area” option.
• O <enter> to select the polyline that outlines the room.
• Select the outline of the room. Notice that the are turns GREEN. This means that you are “adding” areas. You can continue to add areas like a running total of all of the areas.
• <enter> to accept this as our main area.
• S <enter> to “Subtract area”
• O <enter> to select the polylines that outline the columns in the middle of the room.
• Select the polylines of the room. Notice that while in the “Subtract area” mode, that the objects that you select turn RED. This lets you know that you are in fact subtracting areas from the running total.
• <enter> to end the subtract mode
• <enter> once more to end the command and to see the total area minus the columns in the command line