Exporting a sectioned model?
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I haven't been able to find any help in exporting '3d' sections from sketchup.
I would assume exporting a 2d section would be relatively easy being able to group via the section plane, however I wish to export the '3d' section (rather hard to explain)... Am basically wanting a section plane through my scene and delete the geometry that is no longer visible.Also, model is too complex to be grouping via section plane, exploding and then manually clearing the unwanted geometry
Anybody have any tips/help/tutorials/rubys that could help me achieve this?
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Maybe you could use TIG's SectionCutFace plugin .
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Have tried using that, is a helpful plugin, although it doesn't achieve the results that I'm wishing for.
I'm needing a section that cuts through groupings as well, and after the cut is easy to remove the geometry on the unwanted side.
Since I am wanting to export the 3d from sketchup, my section planes by themselves do not transfer to the other program.
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as far as I know there is now way to do that export automatically, for the section plane in SU is merely a display mode and does not affect the geometry at all.
what I would do is to draw a big vertical plane at the position of the proposed section, then copy it and "paste in place" within every group for an intersect-selected command. make sure, that you make components unique, that are being reused somewhere else in the model.
for that it would make sense to assign a keyboard shortcut for the "paste in place" operation (Ctrl+Shift+V for example).a slightly different method is to leave the plane at the section cut position in place, go into each group and select "intersect with model". this gives you all the intersecting edges with the plane without the need of copying it into each group and deleting it lateron.
but if some of your groups are intersecting with each other at some point, you will get unnecessary cutting geometry there as well...I know, both of these ways are quite labour intensive. but I can't think of an easier way to achieve the desired result.
may be a suggestion for a tricky ruby script though...
( - automatically intersect every group with the active section cut plane- delete the part that is hidden
- make components unique before cutting )
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@plot-paris said:
as far as I know there is now way to do that export automatically, for the section plane in SU is merely a display mode and does not affect the geometry at all.
what I would do is to draw a big vertical plane at the position of the proposed section, then copy it and "paste in place" within every group for an intersect-selected command. make sure, that you make components unique, that are being reused somewhere else in the model.
for that it would make sense to assign a keyboard shortcut for the "paste in place" operation (Ctrl+Shift+V for example).a slightly different method is to leave the plane at the section cut position in place, go into each group and select "intersect with model". this gives you all the intersecting edges with the plane without the need of copying it into each group and deleting it lateron.
but if some of your groups are intersecting with each other at some point, you will get unnecessary cutting geometry there as well...I know, both of these ways are quite labour intensive. but I can't think of an easier way to achieve the desired result.
may be a suggestion for a tricky ruby script though...
( - automatically intersect every group with the active section cut plane- delete the part that is hidden
- make components unique before cutting )
thnx for the tip man
it is indeed time consuming, but i guess it's the result that makes all the hardwork worth it
in fact i find the section-cut ruby isn't as much useful as i had expected... -
@brokenstaral said:
...in fact i find the section-cut ruby isn't as much useful as i had expected...
It is (or can be) indeed very useful. True it is mainly useful for a SU output but keep in mind that section cuts cannot be exported into any rendering apps.
SectionCutFace actually creates a group which (or the different faces of which) you can paint just like any other face OR use it as a "saw" to intersect your geometry and still keep a face after you deleted unwanted geometry. Now this cut cafe can already be exported (otherwise you would end up with hollow geometry and a bunch of back faces that export awfully into other apps).
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