Solid Section Cuts?

Eric_J

I'm not a newbie, but I am a moron - and the forum doesn't seem to have a "Moron's Corner" - so I'm going to post here...

I'm trying to figure out how to get a section in LayOut to have a filled-in section cut. That is, I want to have:

A simple black-and-white line drawing that shows visible elements in elevation
A grey or black fill in the walls, floors, roofs and other elements that are cut through.
Parallel projected and drawn to scale

Like what you can do with a pencil and poche in 1/10th the time.

I've already tried grouping the section cut and using the lines to make a mask, but that doesn't seem to work.

Alternately, I suppose I could replace all textures with a solid white material and make the mask grey or black. Then I could display "with textures" and maybe the mask would display as dark.

That means I'd need to have two separate models. One textured for perspectives and rendered images and one white-textured for line drawings in LayOut.

Or composite the mask with the LayOut View and try to get the fill to exactly line up with the linework. Could waste a lot of time trying that one before giving up. So I thought I'd ask if anyone has done this?

Hopefully I'm missing something simple?

Thanks in advance.

Gaieus

Hi Eric,

TIG's SectionCutFace plugin is the solution.

@eric_j said:

I've already tried grouping the section cut and using the lines to make a mask, but that doesn't seem to work.

Actually the plugin also works this way but... The problem with the section cut grouping is that although it is there, it is JUST cut away by the section plane...
So the plugin moves it just a very little back so that it will remain visible and you can snap to it in LO.

In fact, as you cannot snap to section cuts in LO (say with the dimension tool), this plugin is the only useful workaround as you can see in this topic.

So apparently this is not you being a moron (even the GSU Team had problems until we precisely explained what the isue was) therefore, if you do not mind, I would move the topic bck to the LO forum.

bmike

Use the plug in, or create a group from slice, then move it back .1 inch (or similar).
Edit the group by hand to get the colors / lines you want.

I used the group from slice method on these:

I've had mixed results with the plug in... so I mix and match depending on what I need.

TIG

The SectionCutFace isn't always perfect as it has to guess which are solids and which are voids - if your model is 'manifold' then it's fine - but, if you have overlapping volumes it will sometimes get it wrong - in the latest version v2.4 [but also from v2.2] there should be a choice not to erase unfaced edges or not hide edges, which are useful to edit such 'errors' manually later.

bmike

@tig said:

The SectionCutFace isn't always perfect as it has to guess which are solids and which are voids - if your model is 'manifold' then it's fine - but, if you have overlapping volumes it will sometimes get it wrong - in the latest version there should be a choice to not hide edges which is useful to manually edit such errors.

its pretty easy to delete stuff out, for sure, even with the edges hidden.
i've done some recent work on a house with a complex roof - curved eaves and such. section cut face picked up the complex stuff about 50% of the time.

david_h

@unknownuser said:

I'm not a newbie, but I am a moron - and the forum doesn't seem to have a "Moron's Corner" -

I've tried to start one. It keeps getting pulled. Mostly cuz I was the only one posting.

Jean Lemire

Hi folks.

Another possibility is to use a real cutting surface.

See this SU file for ideas.

Solid cuts.skp

pmiller

Or, if you are careful about consistent inside face orientation (as you should be), just make a style in SU where the inside faces are black. Voila, your section cuts will appear solid black, not hollow.

Eric_J

Thank you for all the helpful answers.

I ended up working in LO. Used the pencil tool to draw over the section and filled it in. It's also possible to duplicate the page, render it with vectors then explode the rendering. After that, it's a matter of deleting lines, joining lines and adding fill. A little awkward, but ~~doable, more or less. But if you decide to alter the view...

For some reason, moving the filled section away from the plane in SU didn't work when I tried it the first time, but maybe my tinfoil cap needs a new battery. Or antenna.

@unknownuser said:

@unknownuser said:

I'm not a newbie, but I am a moron - and the forum doesn't seem to have a "Moron's Corner" -

I've tried to start one. It keeps getting pulled. Mostly cuz I was the only one posting.

Well, maybe it's better this way. Morons and genuises can learn from each other. Or something.

@pmiller said:

Or, if you are careful about consistent inside face orientation (as you should be), just make a style in SU where the inside faces are black. Voila, your section cuts will appear solid black, not hollow.

OK, so that's brilliant. Waaaay, waaaaay too simple.

@jean lemire said:

Hi folks.
Another possibility is to use a real cutting surface.

Yes, that works, but again, locating the section plane is critical.

Anyway, these are good suggestions for future work. Thank you all again!

EJE