Can Flexi tell you the square footage of a shape?

[Gino]

Mike Jackson had an article in SignCraft a few years back with that exact scenario I mentioned. He built a sign for a restaurant and figured the square footage down to the inch. Later the customer wanted to add a beam to the bottom that read "RESTAURANT". Because he had figured so accurately he was able to add to the sign since he has some extra footage to play with.

There have been more recent articles in SignCraft that cover this very situation, can't hurt to ask when pulling the permit anyway.

Maybe someone can remember the article that Mike Jackson wrote, huge sign with an elk and crossed rifles. I guess Jackson Hole Wyoming is different (lenient) than other towns.

Anyway Flexi will figure it for you, which was the point of the question. How you use the info is up to you.

Whether or not Jackson Hole or any other municipality allows things to be measured like this, I can't really say. I've never heard of it, never quoted that way and no one has ever sold me substrates based upon what I will use or not. I kinda like it, but still it doesn't sound very feasible.

Your best advise was just ask and see what they say.


So, if I wanted to build a sign 1 foot wide and 32 feet tall, it would be considered a 4' x 8' sign type of permit, just in a different position ?? Hmmmm...... I can see a totally new appraoch to obtaining permits.

 

[Andy D]

It's not the case here, as Gino said they box in the whole design for square footage..
but I can see some municipalities measuring this sign at a lower square footage due to the ascending & descending 5

Vs. this

 

[signcrafters london]

My city bases permit fees on the AREA of the sign. It is $2/sq. ft. (That's another rant for another day.) So a 4' x 8' rectangle sign = $64 for a permit. A 4' x 8 oval = $50.28.

In the attachment, all three of these have the same area. If you use the H x W that some of you are talking about, you'd end up spending 33% more for a permit in my town than if you used the correct area.

At any rate, I'm glad I discovered that function in flexi today.

 

[CreatedDesigns]

My sign permits are the same way and if I figure out the sqft of the actual sign could save me $100's, than if I figure it out by the entire square or rectangle.

 

[Baz]

It certainly makes sense for that purpose!

That's not how sign permits work around here though.

 

[decalman]

Now that this subject is brought up....how can the square ft. of shapes be figured with COREL draw ?

I actually have a great need for this. It's a decal issue, not a permit issue, in my particular case.

 

[James Burke]

AutoCAD allows you to see the perimeter and area of individual shapes. Perhaps a knock-off program like TurboCAD or CorelCAD would be what you're looking for.


JB

 

[GAC05]

My city bases permit fees on the AREA of the sign. It is $2/sq. ft. (That's another rant for another day.) So a 4' x 8' rectangle sign = $64 for a permit. A 4' x 8 oval = $50.28.

In the attachment, all three of these have the same area. If you use the H x W that some of you are talking about, you'd end up spending 33% more for a permit in my town than if you used the correct area.

At any rate, I'm glad I discovered that function in flexi today.

I didn't know it could do this either.
Seems accurate, as a test I vector traced a full length photo of myself and it calculated my BMI in the normal healthy range for a 6 month old baby hippo.


wayne k
guam usa

 

[AF]

Autocad automatically calculates the area of an object. It also has an area tool that allows you to trace around the objects you want to measure. In this screen capture, the object properties box is showing the area of the selected star (square inches) for a regular 5-point star of 48" width. For a permit, the actual area of 5 sq ft is 1/3 the bounding rectangle area of 15 sq ft!

 

[visual800]

does it really matter if your off on sq footage, why does it have to be exact?

if you have a 4x8 box sign with 5 12" halo lit letters can yall just not "guess" it would be bout 34 sq ft.

Im not being a smartazz we dont have to have this for our permits, seems like a PITA to me, more red tape

 

[ddarlak]

It amazes me how many tangents and assumptions are made from a simple question about flexi.

Nowhere in the OP thread did he mention it had anything do do with pricing, yet people respond to that like it was part of the equation...

In my area there are townships that also charge for permits by the SQ FT and irregular shapes can be counted for exactness and not a general overall SqFt.

Very helpful information, I never knew flexi did this.

 

[bob]

Autocad automatically calculates the area of an object. It also has an area tool that allows you to trace around the objects you want to measure. In this screen capture, the object properties box is showing the area of the selected star (square inches) for a regular 5-point star of 48" width. For a permit, the actual area of 5 sq ft is 1/3 the bounding rectangle area of 15 sq ft!


...star image deleted...

Interesting. Being insatiably curious I asked myself just how I would go about doing the same thing programmatically. Just like in calculus, I'd fill the area, either vertically or horizontally, with very thin rectangles that intercept the boundaries of the object then sum the areas of all of these rectangles. If I wanted accuracy to 1 place in 10,000,000, as in the Autocad example, all I'd have to do is make the rectangles sufficiently thin to accommodate that accuracy. Calculating the intercepts of a straight line with most any sort of shape is a relatively simple task. Summing the areas is even simpler.

That boys and girls is calculus, more or less. Except in calculus there are mathematical conventions for doing exactly the same thing without actually doing it. With software, since you have the collection of pixels defining the object at hand, it's probably a damned sight easier to just do it brute force. Or possibly not. Same result either way.

 

[myront]

This Corel macro will get you these results (see attached)

Sub AreaOfShapeSqFt()
ActiveDocument.Unit = cdrFoot
MsgBox Round(ActiveShape.DisplayCurve.Area, 2) & " Sq Ft"
End Sub

 

[shoresigns]

For everyone that's flipping their shit over why someone in the sign business might need to know the area of an irregular shape:

1. For sign permitting, not all jurisdictions use the method where they consider the area of an irregular shaped sign to be an imaginary bounding rectangle. Someone already mentioned an example of this a few posts up.
2. Estimating the weight of a CNC-cut sign. This could be useful for estimating shipping costs or even for engineering.
3. For pricing formulas, one might want to factor used material vs. waste material differently. Most of us wouldn't do that, but I could imagine it being useful for wholesalers like Gemini, especially since they melt down their scraps and reuse them.

 

[Caliber Sign Guy]

It's not always a perfect approach/setup, but it's moments like this that make me happy to be using Illustrator with CADtools - not only can I effortlessly calculate the area of any shape, I can see it in any conceivable unit and I can do the same thing with perimeter. This is beyond useful for calculating the amount of LED's I need to order (cut the perimeter in half unless it's double-stroke) or the amount of trimcap a job will require. This along with a dozen other factors make CADtools the most useful plug-in I've ever encountered!

 

[ams]

I use this for my square footage calculator for permits or anything I need very accurate sq ft on.

Square Footage Calculator