What an Area marker is
An Area marker is a polygon you draw on the drawing. Its value is the area of the polygon, multiplied by the square of the drawing's scale, so what comes out is a real-world area in m² (or ft² in architectural mode).
Use Area markers for:
- Floor areas — per room, per zone, per floor plate.
- Ceiling areas — for tile counts, plaster, paint quantities.
- Roof areas — coverings, insulation.
- Cladding panels, glazing, anything billed by area.
They live in the Area Measurement section of the sidebar.
Area vs Zone — they look similar, they're different
Area markers and Zones both produce polygons. The difference:
- Area markers are the quantity. The polygon's area is what gets counted in the Excel export.
- Zones are filters. They don't add to any total themselves — they just split other markers' counts into per-zone columns.
You can have both on the same drawing — for instance a Zone called "Office" that produces a column in the export, and an Area marker also drawn around the office to count the floor area in m².
Drawing an Area marker
- 1
Click Area Measurement in the toolbar's Takeoff dropdown.
- 2
A new Area group appears in the sidebar. The cursor enters polygon mode.
- 3
Click at each corner of the area you want to measure. Use CTRL + click on macOS (CMD).
- 4
Right-click to close the polygon. The area appears in the sidebar.
- 5
Press ESC or click elsewhere to leave the tool.
Aim for tight, simple polygons. ZeroCount handles concave shapes fine, but very complex polygons (50+ corners) take longer to recalculate when you edit them.
Editing after placement
Area marker handles work the same as Linear and AOI handles:
- Drag a corner to move it.
- Drag the middle of an edge to insert a new corner.
- Drag the whole polygon by clicking inside it (not on a corner).
- Right-click for a context menu with delete-corner and other options.
- Press DEL to remove the whole marker.
The area updates live.
Scale handling
Like Linear markers, Area markers carry a scale at the group level. The scale is squared when computing area — a 1:50 scale means each drawing-unit² in pixels becomes 50² = 2,500 real-world units². ZeroCount handles this for you.
If you change a group's scale after drawing some markers, ZeroCount asks whether to recalculate the existing markers. Say yes unless you have a specific reason not to.
In the Excel export
Area groups appear in the Type = Area rows. Each group's row shows:
- The Scale column populated with the group's scale.
- The group's label as the Takeoff Description.
- The linked product Code and Description (if linked).
- A summed area per zone, in m² (or ft²), already multiplied by the calibration factor squared.
- An Uncategorized column for area outside any zone.
- A Total Quant for the group as a whole.
Each individual Area marker gets a child row labelled Area 1, Area 2, etc. Area markers that span a zone boundary are clipped — the portion inside each zone is counted in that zone's column.