app to calculate sq footage from dxf?

[t300]

I have a project that has 15 or so vector images on a 4x8 sheet. Is there an app out there that can analyze the dxf file and tell me what the total square footage of finished product there is? With so many different pieces it would be a lot of work to manually calculate.

thanks!
Matt

[Gamelord]

When I calculate an item, I just use the total area the item will be cut out of. So lets say you have a letter "O" and it is about 1' wide and 1' tall with a line thickness of 1/4". I charge for 1 sq. ft. of material - even though the actual letter will use a lot less than 1 sq. ft.

The reason is that after cutting out the "O", the rest of the material is basically useless unless you are lucky enough to find a small item to cut out from the drop.

So....getting back to your question, instead of figuring out each individual piece, I would charge for one 4x8 sheet. If you need to figure each piece, just box in each piece and charge for that area. If you are able to nest pieces inside of other pieces, the ones you nest are extra money in your pocket.

[t300]

Good points for calculating cost, but part of this is that I just cut out a bunch of pieces out of a 4x8 sheet of .25, and I want to find out what the total finished product will actually weigh (without actually weighing it )

thanks
Matt

[muzza]

Not sure if you have Coreldraw but if you do you can download this macro free to try for 14 days and buy the licence fairly cheap, about $50. It will calculate you area of objects and also true lengths of outlines etc. and as an added bonus will do nesting. http://eng.plotcalc.com/download.php
Murray

[sodfarmer]

If your using Autocad or Draftsight, use the list command. Will give you the total area and perimeter of the part. Needs to be a polyline.

[hemichargersrt8]

Simple formula for determining weight of a steel piece, Length X Width X Thickness X .283= pounds. The magic number here is ".283". For example, a steel part that is 6" X 6" 12 ga.(.105") would weigh 6 X 6 X .105 X .283 = 1.07 pounds. If looking at the part, portions have been cut out, questimate say 25, 50 or 75% has been removed then reduce the weight appropriately. Again with the above example 6" X 6" X .105" thick and 50% of the interior material removed, would be 6 X 6 X .105 X .283 X .5= .53 lbs.
If you buy your steel by the pound, then this formula will help to determine material cost as well. As others have said, I would still charge for the part material rounded up to the nearest inch.

[SignTorch Vector Art]

in corel draw the object properties docker shows curve length, path count, node count, etc, (no area)

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