This question came up last week after our Site Takeoff Class and I thought it was a good question to answer. The question was asked after we showed how to use the Area Length Count Report to report out Areas for a site takeoff. In the presentation we showed how to digitize a parking area with an exclusion area around a concrete apron. The question was asked "is there an easier way to do takeoffs for areas where there are areas inside areas that saves you having to digitize around the exclusions as a part of the larger area boundary.
The Area Length Count Report simply reports the areas and lengths of lines, it has no way to determine that one area has other areas inside of it that need to be excluded. The internal area lines would have to be associated with the outer areas in order for any calculation to know that they need to be excluded - this is why we showed the method that we showed in the training.
However the Takeoff work process is smarter than the area length count report process, and it does understand that areas with a site improvement that are inside another area with a site improvement do not stack one on the other, and that the inside areas are excluded from the larger outer areas. The example in the question posed was a parking lot with many parking islands, where the parking islands need to be excluded from the asphalt quantities for the parking lot.
The video below compares and contrasts the Area Length Count method with the Site Takeoff Process and shows the fastest / easiest methods to tackle the two approaches.