pline width and area calculation!?

hello,
is there a way to make autocad figure the area of an enclosed pline by the "outermost" side of the enclosed pline?

what i mean is...we have a building (say a 200' x 200' box)
and in our site plan, we want to "beef up" the line weight for this outline. so we give the pline a width of 10'
on our plan..the pline is centered on the wall..so 5' is "outside" of the building and 5' is "Inside" of the building.

when we take the area..it'll be a correct 40,000 square feet.

::::HOWEVER::::
we want the 10' wide pline to be all "inside" the building.. so that any canopies are clealy shown on the site plan. (a 4' canopy would be engulfed by the 5' extra width of the pline)
? so..if we just offset the exterior pline 5' (to the inside) then all the pline is insidet he building..b.ut our area is now...smaller


see what i'm getting at?
so im not sure if theres a command or something to tell autocad to take the area, based on the outermost side of a pline with width?

thanks
-G

 

could you use a mline instead? you can solid hatch the area between the
lines. it will not however give you the area like a closed polyline....a
quick boundry or the area command would .......just a thought.

Paul Caruthers