CP_CALCPOWER (CADPower -> Inquiry -> Calculator) is a calculator tool that aims to mimic and even do better than the calculator tool of AutoCAD.

This command is in early beta and we plan to add more going forward. Some of it can already be seen on the calculator pad as grayed out items.

There is a command-line version also, which offers basic operations like addition, subtraction, multiplication and division on the command line. It is called CALC and also supports the entry of feet and inches.

Examples: 12′ 6″ / 6″ will return 20.0

The operators +, -, * and / are for basic arithmetic operations. If you wish to enter 12 feet and 6 inches, enter the value as 12′ 6″ and not as 12′ -6″. The latter would be interpreted as 12′ (minus) 6″ and you will get a result of 11′ 6″. This is one syntax that users need to be aware of.

Take it for a spin and let us know what you think about it! The calculator tool is in direct response to a number of users who work extensively with measurements and calculations in the drawing to enable support their quantity take-off workflow.

If you look at the dialog box interface for this command, you can see that there are a number of additional ways in which we expect the users to be able to provide input data.

The ‘Measure’ button will allow two points to be picked on the screen and the distance between them will be returned to the current value on the calculator deck. This is already implemented in the current beta version, which is v 23.18

In a near-future version, we will also provide the ability to capture key coordinates (or property) information from picked entities. It could be the X, Y or Z coordinate of the entity (or picked) point, or a property value like length of a line, radius of a circle or area of a closed polygon. We foresee that this should bring in great value to users who work with geometric data and need computations based on drawing objects.

The kind of derived property value we can bring in to the computation is only limited by your imagination and requirements. We are keen to hear from you what are some of the values you would like to see in your calculator as picked from entities in your CAD drawing.