Is there a way to calculate the area of a shape?

[Jesseham-JAh5zI]

I work in toy packaging and the size of the warning we have to use is dictated by the size of the package. On most items, it's pretty straight forward, LxW... But that doesn't always work, as the packaging isn't always that simple. Is there a way to get Illustrator to give me the area of a shape?

Thanks!

[Teri_P]

Select the path
Cmd-Shift-Option-F12 to open the secret programmer's debugging palette
In that palette, scroll down until you see a section called "object tree"
Click on the 'path' label that is in bold-face (which indicates the object is selected)
The "objects" section above will then display various data about the path, including its area in square pts. Negative areas indicate counter-clockwise paths, positive areas are clockwise.



If the object you wish to measure is not near the top of its layer in the stacking order, you may wish to duplicate it to the top via Copy, deselect, Paste in Front, since it can be hard to find lower-down objects in the debug palette window.

Warning: This palette is not supported. It intentionally does not process many notifications, and can therefore cause crashes if you leave it open while editing the document, especially edits that delete objects which it is displaying data about.

[inquestflash]

dude wher eon earth did you come up with that?it seems like a buried

secret of adobe.nice posting 😉

[CarlosCanto]

yet another "super secret" way

select an item in Illustrator, fire up the ESTK, link to Illustrator and drill down to show the selection.area property

or, just type selection[0].area in the console

[Jesseham-JAh5zI]

Holy super cool batcave method. That's awesome!

I am so stoked about this tip. Thanks so much!

[Steve Werner]

Here's an alternative method that might work better for some shapes. (It's not quite as neat as Terri's.)

Make a PDF of the artwork, and open it in Acrobat 7 Pro or Acrobat 8 Pro. Open the Measuring toolbar (View > Toolbars > Measuring). Choose the Area Tool. Drag around the shape, creating a polygon. When you close the shape, the area will be displayed.

There are fancier things you can do (there's are Measuring (2D) and Measuring (3D) preferences panes), and you can actually export measurements to an Excel spreadsheet. This is designed for industries like Architecture.

[_Henry_Neugass_]

Folks:<br /><br />AI CS3 MacOS iMac Core Duo<br /><br />I also need to measure the area of objects (simple polygons) and I do not have Acrobat, so the only option I can see is the utra-cool "secret programmer's debugging palette". But it doesn't seem to work for me. No matter how many objects are currently selected, it doesn't list anything. Under "Artwork Object" there's nothing but "<no current>" Ideas?<br /><br />It would probably be sufficient for my purpose if there was an constant-area reshaping function...<br /><br />Or... What?<br /><br />TIA,<br /><br />Henry

[rcraighead]

That's the way it appeared to me until I clicked "Object Tree" near the bottom of the palette.

[_Martha_Bostwick_]

I haven't used it, but the Telegraphics website (http://telegraphics.com.au/sw/) says they have a free plugin that will calculate the area of a path. Might be worth a look.

Martha

[Teri_P]

As it said in the prior post, to see the information about a particular object, you have to click on the label for that object in the Object Tree area. It is not necessary that the object be selected, it is simply that selecting the object makes it easier to tell which label is the right one, since it will be bolded.

Notice the label in the screen shot that says "path" and is bold and underlined in the Object Tree area. Also notice the instructions to click on the bold word "path".

If the file has a lot of objects in it, is is often easier to paste a duplicate copy of the path at the top of the top layer, so that it will be the first non-layer object shown in the Object Tree area.

[Jesseham-JAh5zI]

It works best for me if I copy and paste the shape into a document of it's own, so it's the only thing in the object tree.

Select the shape, open the batcave window, open that window up so you can see all of the info that shows up, click on the object "button," click on "path" right below. It should pop up a whole pile of info, including the area. It seems like sometimes, I click on the wrong thing first and have to start over at the very beginning with a new document.

To get the area in square inches, I divide the "area" by 72 twice. That's right, right? It's not the other point measurement (72.xxx) is it?

[_Henry_Neugass_]

All:

Thanks for your help.

Just after posting my query I tried to find a utility that would do the job, and the only one I could find that isn't part of a big, costly package is indeed supplied by Telegraphics. (Thanks Telegraphics!) It's called "Patharea". Unfortunately, CS3 isn't yet supported. (I tried the version for CS2 and got a plug-in load error.) so I unzipped my old copy of AI10 and tried with the "Patheara" for that version. It's a tiny bit clunky for my purposes --can't seem to leave its window open and can't copy data from it with cmd-c-- but it is perfectly adequate.

FYI, I'm tracing land plots on existing surveys and drawings. The areas (in acres) of some closed paths can always be determined. I measure a few of these and determine the scale factor for the particular graphic. Then I trace an unknown area-of-interest and apply the scale factor to get acreage value I want. So far, so good: I'm seeing consistency errors typically below 5% on a old survey -- as good as I can expect for tracing plots on a photocopy of a pen-and-ink drawing about 100 years old.

I played with the "secret window" but I didn't discover the trick of clicking near the bottom. Now that I have seen your experiences using this window, I think it will work just fine for me.

Problem solved!

Worth mentioning: I had _no_ idea of the number and variety of plug-ins available for Illustrator. Kid-in-a-candystore!

Thanks!

Henry

[JETalmage]

This .zip archive contains a script named JET_GetArea. You select a path, call the script from the File>Scripts menu, and the script returns the alert shown:



The same caveats which Teri mentioned about compound and self-crossing paths apply.

Such a script could probably be easily be modified to:
1. Prompt the user for drawing scale.
2. Return the area value in acres, based on that scale.

JET

[EastwoodE]

JET,

I found your post and script for calculating the area of a shape.  Thank you for creating and posting the script.  It's (almost!) exactly what I'm looking for.  I have images over which I've traced multipe polygons (on the order of 40-100 polygons per image) and I'm ultimately trying to calculate the % area of the total image that the polygons cover.  Your script works beautifully, except that with multiple polygons, I am forced to select each polygon individually.  I have approximately 60 images to repeat this process over ...

I have some experience coding in Matlab and C -- is there any way to run a loop (or something) to automate this process and find the area of multiple polygons at one time?  I would really appreciate your help!

Thank you!

Erin

[Guest]

I am looking for a method to measure a path area, like everybody else on this thread.

It seems that I am the least sophisticated person around, since I am not sure how to load the script JET provided.

Any hints for a beginner? I have a 9.0.1 Illustrator edition in Windows.

Also following the method Terri recommended, Shift-F12 did not produce the debugging palette.. awful luck - what is to be done?

thanks a bunch

Avi

[Jacob Bugge]

Avi,

The scripts by James do not work in 9, and the debugging palette requires Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F12, but I doubt whether you can get to the bottom of it and see the area.

You may download the free Telegraphics Patharea filter (and the corresponding Pathlength) here (at least Patharea works for 9): http://www.telegraphics.com.au/sw/

An old thread from the Mac side, and with your lost ID, Jesse. By the way, John has said that when (maybe I should say if) they get the split ID solved, they may be able to merge doppelgangers into the main IDs.

[Jesseham]

What's this doing back up here? 😉

I've since made a page describing the debug window method - I think you're missing a key there, but I'm not sure what the combo is on the PC...

Find the area of an irregular object

[Jacob Bugge]

Jesse,

The Win combination is Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F12 (exact match), and it does invoke the debugging palette.

However, in 10, apart from being somewhat simpler, even when a path is chosen it says:

... objects

Artwork Object: <no current>

So I believe it only works from CS on.

Some names from the past.

[Guest]

..appreciate very much the feedback.. indeed I have a sorry old Illustrator version. I was able to invoke the pallette with the combination you posted but the path area was not there. So I downloaded Jacob's filter and now I am trying to see how to plug it in. If you have a hint, I appreciate -

thanks again to both of you!

Avi

[Jacob Bugge]

Avi,

Judging from 10 (on XP), I believe it is (expressed as path, > means \):

C:>Program Files>Adobe>Illustrator 9>Plug-Ins>Illustrator Filters

[Guest]

Jacob

It worked very well - great stuff!. I am a physician and I am working on cardiac MRI.. such as calculating the heart function using slices of heart images in systole and diastole (when the heart is squeezed or full of blood).

.. we can write a little medical paper comparing really pricey software (GE, Siemens, Medis you name it..) with this method for people with not too many pennies in their pocket. The advantage of using Illustrator is that you can blow up the images up to the point of loosing resolution, and trace the margins of the heart with an accuracy that would make any GE guy cry for his mama..

I thought even a cm further.. for simple-minded people (such as physicians for example) one would like a way to input the area of one slice directly into an equation. For example would be a way to create a routine that would take the number of the area of one slice and input it in this equation? Such as to create a little square where you put the slice, you trace it and then the program takes that number and pitches it in the equation without you writing it down on a paper.

thanks again!

Avi

[Jacob Bugge]

You are welcome, Avi.

[Guest]

I am trying to buy CS5 for the hospital I work with (they said more or less with a joke they would not accept on their computers stuff older than the hospital itself). Just to see if I can use the Telegraphics plug-in I downloaded a trial version of CS5. Surprisingly it did not have the Filters tab on it. I assume this is just a drawback of the trial version, and I will find that particular tab on the real product. Is this accurate? Or should I find the plug-ins and filters on a different tab?

Thanks for info

Avi

[Larry G. Schneider]

Filters are now in the Object menu.

[Guest]

Hi Jacob, everybody

..restarting messages on this thread.

We did since last August quite a few cardiac MRI patients using the telegraphics plug-in and it is working great. Nice resolution, quite affordable price in comparison with what medical companies offer.

Again what we do is to copy and paste images from the MRI machine (via a CD) in Illustrator, trace the surface areas of the heart slices recorded by the machine and then calculate various metrics used by cardiologists (most important is the "ejection fraction", which measure the pumping function of the two lower chambers: either the right or the left ventricle).

There are two tedious steps in this process. One is the copy and paste and the other is the contouring.

I was wandering wether I can have a way automatize the first function. Specifically it would be nice to have a tool to export a set of images (and one can input values in regards to what series of images one wants to export) from DICOM media (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) to Illustrator. Any ideas if there are any plug-ins available, or if one can be created.

This is slighly unrelated to this thread so probably I will start another one... called "Is there a way to: Export images from DICOM media into Illustrator?"

http://forums.adobe.com/message/3586323?tstart=0

Regards and thanks

Avi