Hatch patters are great for showing where a specific area is in your drawing and this week's tip is how to find the square footage of that specified area.

Select and highlight a hatch pattern and then open the Properties palette. Under the Geometry heading at the bottom of the palette you will find three listings; Elevation, Area, and Cumulative Area.  All the listings for area are in square inches and square feet.

Another little trick is that you can left click in the box that shows the area, select the calculator palette button, and then cut and paste the value to another application such as Excel.