Shape Area & Perimeter Tool

[Jennifer]

Some time ago, I posted a question about calculating the area and perimeter of irregular shapes with cutouts. Several people helped me make the Space shape work and I was able to do what I needed to at that time. I now have another project that requires those calculations and I came across another Visio tool that has several advantages over the Space shape.

The tool is the Shape Area & Perimeter tool that is available with Visio Pro 2003. It can be accessed from Tools | Add-Ons | Visio Extras | Shape Area and Perimeter....

I learned about it from this article:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/visio-help/measure-the-area-and-perimeter-of-closed-shapes-HP001038532.aspx

The advantages over the Space shape are:

• It also provides the perimeter.
• The dialog box can remain open so that it can be applied to different shapes on the page.
• It isn't finicky about the page units.
• It's much faster.

The one disadvantage is that the values must be copied to a text box if they are to be displayed on screen. It also doesn't create a new shaoe on the page.

These are the steps to get the area and perimeter of an irregular shape with cutouts:

• Create a closed border around the area you want to measure, if there isn't one already.
• Select the closed shape or shapes you want to measure.
• Click on Tools | Add-Ons | Visio Extras | Shape Area and Perimeter....
• From the Total area: and Total perimeter: fields, select the units of measure you want.
• With the Shape Area and Perimeter dialog box still open, resize the shapes you are measuring or select different shapes on the drawing page. The area and perimeter values are updated automatically.
• To display the text on the drawing page, select the text in the Total area or Total perimeter box, copy the text, and paste it onto the drawing page.
• If the target area has cutouts that are separate shapes, use the Combine shape operation to combine them into a single shape. It is a good idea to apply a fill to ensure that the cutouts are not part of the shape.

I have attached an image of an irregular shape both before and after adding a cutout of known size.

I find this to be a very useful complement to the Space shape.