written by Ernie Wright
Summary: Modeler plug-in that calculates the surface area and volume of the selected polygons in the foreground layer.
Based on Ronald N. Goldman, "Area of Planar Polygons and Volume of Polyhedra," in Graphics Gems II, James Arvo ed., Academic Press, 1991 (ISBN 0-12-064480-0).
Downloading and Installing AreaVolume
The SGI executable of this plugin can be found here (Ernie was also kind enough to allow the source code to be included in the archive). The Intel, Alpha, and Amiga versions of the plugin can be found on Ernie Wright's Stuff You Can Get site.
To install AreaVolume, simply copy areavol.p to the modeler's plugin directory. Run the Lightwave Modeler and choose Objects->Custom->Add Plugin and select the areavol.p plugin file. You should then see AreaVolume under your Objects->Custom pulldown menu.
Using AreaVolume
Select the polygons you are interested in. The plug-in uses the entire contents of the foreground if nothing has been explicitly selected. Choose Objects->Custom->AreaVolume and you will be presented with an informative message box that contains the polygons' surface area and volume. The volume is valid when the object is a closed polyhedron with aligned, flat, single-sided polygons. The surface area calculation assumes only that the polygons are flat.