Area Panel Filters are advanced filtering controls in Snaptrude's Area Panel that let you view area totals by department, story, or label, while excluding geometry that should not count toward your overall numbers. They give design teams a clean, reliable read on project areas at any point in the design process.

Why Do Area Numbers Get So Confusing in Complex Models?

Here's the thing: area calculations should be one of the simpler parts of early-stage design. You draw spaces, assign departments, and your program panel tells you where you stand. That's the idea.

But complex projects don't work that cleanly. You have planning blocks sitting over residential floors. Envelopes that wrap multiple stories. Roads and landscape elements that technically have area but should never count toward your program. Site massing that overlaps with actual built space.

When all of that lives in one model and nothing is filtered, your area totals start lying to you. Not because something is broken, but because the model is counting everything, including things it shouldn't. You end up cross-referencing spreadsheets, manually subtracting elements, or building workarounds to see a number you can actually trust.

We kept hearing this from teams working on mixed-use and master plan projects especially. The model was right. The math was technically correct. But the number showing in the panel wasn't the number they needed.

In projects with overlapping geometry, planning elements, or multiple building types, unfiltered area totals can misrepresent the actual program. Architects need a way to control exactly what gets counted.

What Are Area Panel Filters and How Do They Work?

The Snaptrude Area Panel now includes a filtering layer that sits on top of your area data. You can filter by three dimensions: Department, Story, and Label. Each supports single-select and multi-select, so you can look at one department at a time, compare two stories side by side, or isolate a specific label across the whole project.

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Detailed release notes here.

Critically, filters are not just cosmetic. When you apply a filter, it affects the rows in the panel, the group rollups, and the total area at the bottom. Everything recalculates. What you see is what the filtered view actually represents, nothing extra carried along silently.

Active filters appear as removable chips at the top of the panel. If you want to clear one filter without touching the others, you click the chip. If you want to start fresh, you clear all. The defaults are clean: no filters applied when you open a project, with the view set to Carpet Area and sort set to Label. You start from a neutral state every time.

Filters are also user- and browser-specific. If you and a colleague are working in the same model, your filtered view does not affect what they see. And if a department, story, or label gets deleted from the project, it automatically drops out of any active filter. No orphaned filter states to clean up.

Area Panel Filters recalculate rows, rollups, and totals together, so every number you see reflects the filtered view accurately, not the full unfiltered model.

How Does the Double-Counting Problem Actually Get Fixed?

This is the part that matters most for complex models. Snaptrude now lets you exclude specific geometry types from your area totals: envelopes, planning blocks, roads, pools, gardens, and other non-program elements.

Here's why this matters in practice. Imagine a mixed-use project where you've modeled a planning block to represent the overall building footprint. That block has area. It also physically overlaps with the floors and spaces inside it. If your panel counts the planning block's area alongside the spaces it contains, your total is inflated, sometimes by a significant amount.

With the Cleaner Area Totals feature, you decide what counts. You exclude the planning block. The spaces inside it still count. The total reflects your actual program, not the geometry you used to define the site strategy.

The same logic applies to roads, envelopes, and landscape elements on master plan projects. These are legitimate modeling objects. They need to be in the model for the design to make sense. But they should not be in your program area totals. Now they don't have to be.

Excluding non-counting geometry from area totals removes the manual workarounds teams have been using for years, and gives program numbers that are correct without any extra calculation.

Can You Use Filters to Validate a Program Floor by Floor?

Yes, and this is where story-level isolation becomes particularly useful.

When you're reviewing a multi-storey project, looking at the total area for a department tells you whether you've hit the target. But it doesn't tell you how that area is distributed across floors, or whether any single floor is over- or under-allocated. For code compliance, program validation, and client presentations, you often need that breakdown.

Story filters let you isolate one floor at a time. Select Story 3, and you see only the areas on that floor: the rows, the department rollups, the total. You can check whether the floor area matches what the program called for, and whether the department mix is right.

You can also combine story filters with department and label filters. If you want to understand how much of Story 4 is allocated to clinical spaces in a hospital project, for example, you filter by that story and that department together. The panel gives you exactly that view.

Story-level filters combined with department and label filters let you validate your program at any level of granularity, from the full building down to a single department on a specific floor.

What Does This Mean for Your Team's Workflow?

For individual architects, it means less time managing data and more time designing. You no longer need to maintain a parallel spreadsheet to cross-check your panel numbers. The panel itself becomes the source of truth, because you control what it shows.

For principals and project leads, it changes how you review program compliance. You can open a project, apply a filter, and in seconds see whether a given department is on target for a specific floor. Client reviews become easier. Milestone check-ins become faster. You're not asking someone to pull a report; the model already has the answer.

The Area Panel has always tracked your design in real time. These filters make that real-time data actually usable at the level of detail complex projects require.

This matters most for teams working on: mixed-use developments with site massing alongside program spaces, healthcare and institutional projects where department-level area targets are strict, master plans where planning geometry and built program live in the same model, and multi-storey projects where floor-by-floor area validation is part of the design process.

We built this because we kept seeing teams work around the tool to get a number they could trust. That should not be necessary. Your model has the data. The panel should surface it cleanly, at whatever level you need.

Area Panel Filters reduce the time spent managing area data and increase confidence in program numbers, for both the architects working in the model and the leads reviewing it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are Area Panel Filters in Snaptrude?Area Panel Filters are controls in Snaptrude's Area Panel that let you filter area data by Department, Story, and Label. When you apply a filter, it updates the rows, group rollups, and total area values to reflect only the filtered selection. They're designed to help teams get accurate, focused area readings without maintaining workaround spreadsheets.

How do I stop geometry like roads and envelopes from inflating my area totals?In Snaptrude's Area Panel, you can exclude specific geometry types such as envelopes, planning blocks, roads, pools, and gardens from your area calculations. This prevents non-program elements from being counted in your totals, even if they physically overlap with program spaces in the model.

Can I see area totals for a single floor of a building?Yes. Story filters in the Area Panel let you isolate one storey at a time. You can also combine a story filter with department or label filters to see, for example, how much area a specific department occupies on a specific floor. The totals and rollups all update to reflect the filtered view.

Do filters affect what my teammates see in the same project?No. Filters are user- and browser-specific. Your filtered view is yours alone. Other team members working in the same project see their own view, unaffected by your active filters.

What happens to a filter if I delete a department or label from the project?If you delete a department, story, or label that is part of an active filter, Snaptrude automatically removes it from that filter. You do not need to manually clean up filter states when your program changes.

Try It on Your Next Project

Area Panel Filters are live in Snaptrude now. If you're working on anything with overlapping geometry, a multi-storey program, or department-level area targets, open the Area Panel and try filtering by story or department. The numbers will speak for themselves.

If you're new to Snaptrude's programming environment, read how we think about connecting design and program data, or see the full picture of what changed in Snaptrude 3.0.

The data has always been in your model. Now you can actually see it the way you need to.

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