I’ve played with the new section tools a little…
Basically, it’s great that McNeel came forth with section styles and tools after a long wait, no doubt about it.
Some findings:
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Placing a Clipping Section means placing a clipping plane, as an object. It’s not like placing a VisualArq section line point by point. Also, a Clipping Section cannot have jogs, like in VA. However, multiple Clipping Sections can be placed.
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To get an actual 2D projection of the Clipping Section, a ‘Clipping Section Drawing’ has to be created (second icon in the toolbar). It can be roughly compared to vaPlan/SectionView, but it is not a block (or a group), but a bunch of lines on locked layers. As such, the Clipping Drawing cannot be selected and moved or deleted (vaPlan/SectionViews can, because they are blocks).
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When the Clipping Section is moved, it’s Clipping Drawings will update automatically (after mouse up). Nice.
But here’s a problem:
The initial location of the Clipping Drawing is remembered - the bottom left corner of it’s bounding box, actually. Now, when the Clipping Drawing is seen through a Detail in a Layout, maybe annotated, with 2d graphics on top of the Detail view, and then the 3D model is changed in a way that the bounding box is exceeded, the Clipping Drawing will adapt and probably move, and all the annotations become offset/wrongly placed (because the bouding box has grown, and the bottom left corner is locked in place). See here in the main section tools thread.
Rajaa Issa is aware of the problem, and said she’s looking into a fix. -
The Clipping Drawing will show correct line widths, and clipping hatches. It does not yet show elevation hatches (like colors of unclipped objects), much less projected textures (which Sketchup Layout can, btw.)
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I for my part am not too happy with the approach that 2D projections (Clipping Drawings) have to be placed somewhere in model space. They get in the way, and I don’t want to be forced to sort out good positions for them. They just clutter 3D space. Clipping Sections will even clip their own Clipping Drawings…
If you wonder where the 2D projection should then be placed instead of model space… so am I!
In this post, I try to convey the idea of a new, dedicated 2D space between model and layout space, which would clean up the workflow substantially, imo.
Curious about what you will say about section tools…