This is one the most useful enquiry commands and it is quite frequently used to measure the area in AutoCAD. You can start this enquiry command from the Area option of the Measure flyout or you can use its command, AREA. In the following drawing, we will find the area of the washroom with this enquiry tool using the following steps:

1. Start the Area tool from the Measure flyout or use its command, AREA.
2. Now the command line will prompt you to specify the first point. Click on one of the corners of the washroom and then keep clicking until you have selected all four walls, as shown in the following figure.

3. The selected area will show in green. To find the area, press Enter and the area will show up above the command line. The area will display in the current unit of the drawing template:

As you may have noticed, this method was pretty straightforward because our example involved straight walls, but if you want to find the area of objects that are not made with straight lines, then you need to use a different method. In this case, we will find the area of the washing bay, which contains filleted edges, using the following method:

1. To find the area in question, select all the lines and arcs that make the boundary of the sink area and join them using the JOIN command to make a single polyline.
2. Start the AREA command and select the Object option from the command line, as shown in the following figure:

3. Now click on the polyline you just joined in the previous step and the area of the polyline will show up above the command line:

In this case, the area shown above the command line is the complete area of the sink area, which includes the area of sinks and other objects inside the polyline. If, however, you want to remove some area from your calculation, then you can do that as well, as in the following example:

In the following example, we will once again calculate the sink area, but this time we will exclude the area occupied by sinks. So, essentially, we will find the area shown by the hatch pattern in the preceding figure:

1. To calculate this area, once again use the AREA command.
2. Select the Add area option from the command line and then click on the Object option in the command line.

3. Now click on the magenta-colored polyline marking the boundary of the sink area, then press Enter and you will notice that the entire sink area turns green, highlighting the selected area.
4. Now click on the Subtract area option from the command line and then the Object option from the command line.
5. Now click on the two rectangles inside the selected green region so that they turn brown, as shown in the following figure:

6. Finally, press the Enter key and the area will show up above the command line.

In this case, the calculated area is the area shown in green and it does not include the area in brown. After having looked at the enquiry tools, it's time that we looked at the drawing management tool called layers. Layers is one of the most important features of AutoCAD drawings and we will discuss it in detail in the next section.