How to Calculate Cubic Feet in Odd Angles

You can calculate a home's square footage simply by adding the figures you obtain from multiplying the length of every room by the width of every room. But to calculate cubic footage, you must multiply the length by the width by the height of every room. Because most homes include rooms that are not perfect squares or rectangles, you may need to use geometric principles to find the exact cubic footage. You can accurately measure cubic footage by laying basic geometric shapes over the floor plan with tracing paper.

Floor plan
Tracing paper

Instructions

- 1
  Place the tracing paper over the floor plan and begin to draw squares and rectangles to find the measurements of the large spaces in each room. Use the measurements on the floor plan to label the length and width of each shape you create.
- 2
  Draw 90-degree triangles to find the measurements of the remaining angled sections of rooms. Because the lengths of the two "legs" of the triangle are all you need to calculate the footage, draw the triangle so that the angled section of a room's wall forms its hypotenuse.
- 3
  Add a triangle to an oddly shaped room section to create a rectangle. Once you have the rectangle, you can use half of it to find the cubic footage for the room because a 90-degree triangle takes up the space of exactly half of a rectangle.
- 4
  Use the area calculator to obtain or check the square footage measurements. Next, multiply the square footage by the height listed on the floor plan to obtain the cubic footage.

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