BIM: Arch Wall does not provide inner area

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues

Problem description

Given a base wall of 3 m (H) x 3 m (W) x 0,4 m (T) as an example for the discussion. Defining standalone walls as those with a Draft Line Base, and closed walls as those with a Draft Rectangle Base –also for this discussion only.

Arch_Wall provides the VerticalArea property, which is inherited from Arch_Component (unless mistaken, since it's not documented there). The vertical area returns the sum of the areas of all vertical wall faces.

• For standalone walls: the aggregated area of front, back, left, right vertical faces
• For closed walls: the aggregated area of outer front, back, left, right vertical faces and their inner counterparts

It also provides the Area property. It reportedly returns the area of the whole wall

• For standalone walls: the area of the (front?) face. I.e. for our standalone wall, it returns 9m². Neither 18m² (front and back faces), nor 22.80 m² (all faces). In that regard, it does not work as documented, but is consistent with the result for closed walls. For the sake of discussion, we could call this OuterArea.
• For closed walls (e.g. with a rectangle baseline): the aggregated area of outer front, back, left, right vertical faces without their inner counterparts. For our closed wall, it returns 36 m². We could call this also OuterArea.

For a closed wall, there is no direct way to read what we could call InnerArea: effectively the aggregate of areas from the vertical faces inside the rectangle. For a standalone wall, this can be inferred from OuterArea, as they will be the same.

Given a use case of calculating the required area of insulation panels inside a house with Arch_Schedule, it would be useful for Arch_Wall to provide InnerArea as well.

Full version info

OS: Ubuntu Core 22 (ubuntu:GNOME/ubuntu)
Word size of FreeCAD: 64-bit
Version: 0.22.0dev.37085 (Git) Snap 1005
Build type: Release
Branch: main
Hash: c7c07f28c639e82a6d2c58f4aaef5b42cddcc83c
Python 3.10.12, Qt 5.15.10, Coin 4.0.0, Vtk 7.1.1, OCC 7.7.1
Installed mods: 
  * OpenTheme 2024.4.20
  * BIM 2021.12.0
  * Curves 0.6.35
  * ezydxf
  * ExplodedAssembly
  * BillOfMaterials 0.0.8.2
  * Ondsel-Lens 2024.4.16.01
  * Assembly4 0.50.12

Subproject(s) affected?

Arch

Anything else?

No response

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