It brings true 3D section boxes into SketchUp and focuses on making the whole experience feel as native as possible. You can create a box, select it, and drag its handles directly with the Select Tool, without switching tools. This makes adjusting the six cut planes smooth and natural. All of this is possible thanks to the Overlay system behind the scenes.
You can also double-click to enter the box and edit your groups or components as usual, then exit with one action. BoxView manages all internal section levels automatically so you can focus on modeling without extra setup.
The holiday season is coming up soon, so I opened an early 50 percent offer for BoxView as an invitation for anyone who wants to try it without waiting.
Thanks for reading, and I hope BoxView helps your workflow.
Any feedback is always appreciated.
I suppose this can be achieved by putting an object in redundant groups, and then adding sections in those separate groups. The native way isn’t hard but it is tedious. But this is special, I don’t think there is another extension that does this. Fact check me SU community.
Yes, the idea isn’t new, and doing it manually is definitely tedious and cumbersome. What makes BoxView special is how easy and flexible it is to create and edit these viewing boxes, making the whole process much faster.
It uses nested groups with a Section Plane at each level, but you don’t really feel that structure. The tool handles entering and exiting levels automatically, so editing works just like double-clicking a normal group.
Thanks for the reply @curic4su - if this is smooth to work with and doesn’t add cumbersome extra or ghost geometry I’ll have to give it a try. I generally do this manually but I only use 2 planes to isolate my models for shop drawings.
BoxView doesn’t duplicate geometry or create any ghost copies. It only wraps your existing model in a lightweight nested structure, and the tool also cleans up after itself.
Happy to hear any feedback if you try it out!
I tried it. it’s neat. like you say, it’s lightweight, no need for a nested doll structure of 4-5 groups. neat.
now, the only thing missing it the inverse boxcut.
like this one
(I know, I could simply install both. but it could be a good combo tool, you make your boxcut, and you invert it to remove the content of the box instead of removing the rest)
I’m aware of this kind of “inverse cut.” It’s possible, but to create a proper inverted cut you need to duplicate the model and stack it, which makes sense for rendering or presentation. For a tool focused on creating views, checking the model, or helping with modeling in tight, this approach isn’t really suitable. Still, it’s something to consider
There are a few problems with an interactive polyhedra section, since it has to be based on superimposing instances of original geometry, each with its own adjustable section plane:
we cannot see proper lines at the intersection of section planes
We see the traces of the section planes over the rest of the model (actually the intersections of the geometry instances).
Still, this can be useful for a quick interactive view, since the approach allows to edit the geometry in the section box configuration (i.e., no copy of geometry).
Yes. BoxView creates a controlled nested structure so each cut plane can work independently. But the tool manages entering and exiting levels automatically, so you don’t really feel the hierarchy, and you only see it if you actually expand the structure in the Outliner.
I agree with you. Duplicating instances is something to keep in mind, so this method is mostly practical for quick viewing. It does have its value, and since everything shares one definition you’re still editing a single set of entities.
Thanks for the explanation. I use an Outliner based workflow and the hierarchy is very important for exporting so I think this wont work with that. Looks useful though!
Hi curic4su,
Your BoxView new extension looks initially very cool from your video
I recall I mentioned something like this many many years on this forum, now its here
Fact check me SU community.
