The projected areas of non-spherical particles do not represent an unambiguous particle characteristic. Depending on the orientation towards a constant observational direction, different projected areas result. The spectrum of all projected area values of a particle, if determined representatively, gives the probability with which a certain value is obtained by a single measurement. In this work, the frequency distributions of different examples of test objects were both calculated and measured. The objects were a cube, a rectangular parallelepiped and also three model agglomerates consisting of spheres of the same size. Instead of just one projected area, during each measuring procedure three projected areas from three orthogonal directions can be obtained. A mean value is then calculated to reduce the ambiguity of the particle characteristic and enhance the resolution. A suitable measurement set-up is introduced. The results of calculation and measurement are compared for observation from just one direction and also simultaneous observation from three directions. The frequency distributions of the equivalent diameters of the particle projected areas show a characteristic trend of the total curve with remarkable properties. The simultaneous measurement of three values from mutually orthogonal directions and their mean value calculation result in a much narrower distribution. In this case, a nonsphericity factor can additionally be calculated, whose frequency distribution contains information in a characteristic manner about the degree to which the particle shape differs from a sphere.