Hi;
These are some very well thought out responses. Out of laziness, I'm going to quote off parts of JQL's fine comments:

*SECTION VISIBILITY

Sections have no specific way of controlling visibility of single sections. Either you turn them all visible or all invisible.
This makes us use layers to do that. If a section is in layer X making X invisible turns off that section's visibility;
This makes our project have layers that have no direct relation to geometry and are there just for section control;
Layers panel becomes untidy wich is a workflow buster for people that rely on layers for their work (I've learnt not to...)*

For me, I do not mind seeing all of the layers at once, as long as I can figure out which ones I am looking at. That is where being able to name them in a panel comes in. I probably would never bother to go beyond a default name assigned by the panel itself (Section Plane 1), except when that section cut is used in a scene. not all are; some are just there to help me get around in the model while building it. But, if I could turn on all of the Section Planes at once (as Sketchup does now), hover over each one in turn and have it display the scenes that it is used in, that would be good information.

*ACTIVE SECTION CONTROL

Layers don't control wich section is active or not;
To do that we have to use Scenes;
In scenes panel we have to create scenes for sections that establish wich is the active section and wich are the active layers;
This is hard to setup and easy to mess up;*

The fragility of this arrangement is my biggest issue, but I do not have any suggestions as to how to address it.

SECTION CUT FACE FILL
Sections in sketchup are also unfilled. What this means is that traditional architectural drawings have section outlines through wall finishes and a solid color that fills the solid parts of the project;
Sketchup doesn't generate that fill so you have to adress that in creative ways or...;
There are a couple of plugins that adress the above issue (Section Cut Face is the oldest and most reliable to me, but there is Skalp wich is commercial and full of stuff some people need).

Automatically filled sections would be excellent. I have several ways to do it, but they are all repetitive, and almost always required if a Section Cut is to be used in a scene. The option to default to a filled section would be very useful.

*PRESENTATION AND EXPORT
People use Sections for technical drawings or presentations;....

...To heal it, we often use 2 or more scenes that we export to Layout or CAD;
One is from the model view with the active section;
The other is from the filled section cut face, isolated and with a transparent background.
We use the second over the first and the unwanted parts of that section countour line are hidden.*

True. What I think we are talking about is a script that would automatically export 2 scenes into Layout from one command. First, the "PLAN" (or whatever scene you are exporting) which shows the cut away interior detail, and then the scene with the filled section (Plan FILL) on top of it. You would need to be able to link 2 scenes in Sketchup to tell the program to repeat the "insert" operation twice whenever a particular scene (in this case, that would be insert"PLAN" scene) was invoked. Inserting a scene called "PLAN" would automatically first insert the "PLAN" scene, then the "Plan FILL" scene on top of it. However, now that I think of it, this may be a command inside Layout, not Sketchup.

HOW SHOULD MANAGING SECTIONS IN SKETCHUP BEHAVE
In an ideal world we'd have a section manager where we could have a simple list of sections and if we'd select a section it would simply become active and we could use it at any moment in our modelling or presentation inside Sketchup.
We also shouldn't need to setup standard section scenes in Sketchup as they're basically an ortho view, aligned with a section plan, with an the active section and a predefined style.

First, I set up my commonly desired scenes w/ views and cuts in Sketchup templates, and it seems to work OK.

Second, I think the complexity of this task sky rockets once this new Section Cuts panel is asked to work in conjunction with a counterpart in Layout. If that is possible, then great. But I would not want to forego improving the function of Section Cuts in Sketchup because it was not possible to make it work in Layout as well.

Going back to my original post, The ability to open a panel, see all of the section planes listed, to name them, and possibly to be able to activate them- that would really help my workflow. All of the rest would be wonderful, but this is the bottom line for me.

Again, thanks for all of your work and consideration.

Ray Strang

Hi;

While we are dreaming, wouldn't it be nice if you could select the active section plane from the list in our hypothetic Section Cuts Panel? Then you would not have to go fishing in the model in order to find the section plane you wanted.

I typically have between 12-20 section planes. Yes, I know about how to use the camera tool to make scenes of interior rooms, etc. I use that for bathrooms, kitchens, etc, where I don't care about the surrounding spaces. But that method has it limits when you go beyond the actual single room view. If you want consistency with the rest of your drawing set, you end up having to manually edit the camera scenes to give them partial fills, borders, etc, and that eats into the advantage of the technique.

Ray Strang

HI;

Thanks for all of the comments.
To clarify my original intention:
I undestand about active and inactive section planes, and there is no harm in leaving the visibility of section planes "on" all the time, so long as they are not active anywhere except in the scenes where you want them to be.

All I am really after is a way to name them- to tell one from the other when they are close together or "in traffic" in a crowded model. Putting them on layers does accomplish that, even if it is clumsy. Some kind of little window like the layers window would be nice, where all it did was list the layers and allow them to be named. But when is additional complexity a problem rather than a solution? This may be one of those times. On the other hand, I have no idea what is involved in listing the section planes in a visible place and allowing them to be renamed to match my scenes.

Thanks again,
Ray Strang

I just answered my own question- at the very least, each Section Cut plane can be assigned to it's own layer and identified by name that way. I had never realized that. It adds a lot of layers, but that is better than nothing. Do any of the layer managers offer "layer groups" that can be turned on and off as a whole?
Thanks,
Ray Strang

Hi;
Is there a way to name and select individual Section Cut planes? I end up with a lot of them and it would be a help if I could name them to match their scene. Even assigning them each their own layer would work.
Thanks,
Ray Strang