Extracting information from an AutoCAD drawing is a routine job for almost every draftsman or designer. In AutoCAD, you can extract information from your drawing in many ways—and depending upon the situation and complexity of geometry, you can choose between different tools available to you.
This article is dedicated to the topic of extracting information from AutoCAD drawings. Although you can use dimensioning tools to find information like length, angle, radius or coordinates, these tools are simply not enough to get all of the required information related to drawing entities.
Here I am listing methods of extracting information from your drawing using inquiry commands and some other tools. Let’s start with the Properties palette.
Using the Properties Palette
The obvious method of finding information about a drawing entity is via the Properties palette, which can be used to look up and change multiple properties of an object. Let’s assume that we want to find out the radius of a circle in a drawing and also, if required, we want to modify it. For that, we select the circle from the drawing area, right-click in the blank space and select Properties from the contextual menu.
Scroll down a little bit to the Geometry panel, where you will see properties like radius, diameter, circumference, etc. You can not only view this information, but also easily modify it. As an example, let’s modify the circle’s circumference using the Properties palette.
With the available options of the “Circle” command, it is not easy to make a circle of a particular circumference; however, you can easily modify the circumference of a circle in the Properties palette and other parameters like radius will change accordingly. To change the circumference, click in the Circumference field, type the new value and press Enter.
Distance Inquiry Tool
As the name suggests, this inquiry command can be used to find the distance between two points in the drawing area.
To use this command, select Distance from the Measure flyout of the Utilities panel on the Home tab. You can also use its command equivalent, “DI.” Your cursor will now change into a point selection cursor. Click on two points in the drawing area and the distance will now appear above the command line, along with other information as shown in the image below.
In order to find the distance between multiple points in the drawing area, select the Distance tool or type “DI” on the command line and click on the first point in the drawing. You will notice a “Multiple points” option on the command line. Click on it and then click on the second, third and other consecutive points. The total distance between all such points will be reported above the command line.
Radius Inquiry Tool
To find the radius of a circle or arc, you can use the Radius Inquiry tool. To use this tool, click on Radius from the Measure flyout. To use it from the command line, type “MEA” and select Radius from the command line options. Then click on the circle or arc from the drawing area. The resultant radius and diameter will be shown above the command line.
Angle Inquiry Tool
As the name suggests, this tool can be used to find the angle between two entities. To use this tool, once again select Angle from the Measure flyout of the Utilities panel and click on two lines. The angle will be shown above the command line just like the other inquiry tools. To use this tool from the command line, type “MEA” and select Angle from the command line.
Area Inquiry Command
This is one of the most useful tools of the inquiry command. Using this tool, you can find the area of rooms in the floor plan, the area of land, etc. To explain this command, I will use the sample floor plan below.
Let’s assume that we need to find the area of room A. To do that, select Area from the Measure flyout of the Utilities panel. Now click on four corners of the room and press Enter. You will see that the total area of the room along with its perimeter will become visible above the command line.
You can also measure the area of multiple rooms using the Area tool. To find the area of all rooms, select the Area tool from the Utilities panel again and click on Add Area from the command line. Now click on four corners of the first room and press Enter. Then select the four corners of other rooms in a similar way and press Enter. You will now see the total area above the command line along with the combined perimeter.
Using this tool, you can also calculate the area by subtracting the area from another object. Let’s use this sample drawing as an example.
Here we want to find the area of the rectangle indicated by the green color, excluding the area of the circle. For that, start with the Area tool from the Utilities panel or type “AREA” on the command line and press Enter. The command line will prompt you to specify the first point. Don’t click on any point in the drawing area; instead, click on Add Area from the command line and then click on the Object option from the command line.
Now your cursor will change into a pickbox. Select the rectangle from the drawing area and press Enter. The area of the complete rectangle will now appear above the command line. Select Subtract Area from the command line, click on Object from the next command line prompt and select the circle. You will notice that the remaining area of geometry will appear above the command line.
In a similar way, you can find the area of complex geometries using the Add and Subtract Area tools of the Area command. Another alternate method of finding these kind of areas is the “Hatch” command. Make a hatch in the region indicated by the green color in the image above and then find the area of hatch using the Properties palette. That area of hatch found using Properties palette will appear in green.
Volume Inquiry Command
This command can be used to inquire about the volume of 3D geometries. To find the volume of an object, click on Volume from the Measure flyout of the Utilities panel on the Home tab. The command line will now prompt you to specify the first corner point of volume. Don’t click on any point in the drawing area; directly select the Object option from the command line. Then click on the object for which you want to find the volume; as always, the volume will become visible above the command line.
You can also use the Volume tool to calculate the volume of multiple objects by selecting Add Volume or Subtract Volume from the options in the command line.
ID Point
This tool can be used to find the coordinate of any point in your AutoCAD drawing. To use this tool, click on the ID Point tool in the expanded Utilities panel on the Home tab and click at the point for which you want to find the coordinates. As always, you will find the results above the command line.
MASSPROP Command
This command is especially useful for finding the physical properties of a 3D solid or a 2D region. Using this command, you can find properties like centroid, moment of inertia and radius of gyration for a 3D object.
To use this command, type “MASSPROP” on the command line and press Enter. Then select the object from the drawing area and press Enter again. You will see that a list will pop up above the command line with all of the object’s properties, as shown in the image below.
If you want to save this information in a file, press Enter and select Yes from the next command prompt. Specify a location to save the MPR file (mass property file) and click on Save. The properties will now be saved in the specified file. You can open the MPR file using any text editor in order to refer to the object’s properties whenever required.
You can find information about AutoCAD geometries in many other ways as well, but these were some of the most popular and easy-to-use methods and tools. Which inquiry command is your favorite? Let us know in the comments below.