Elevator Boarding at an angle 2.skp (1.1 MB)
I need to go inside this elevator to finish it, adding a control panel and railings on the curved sides, maybe shelves and people too?
It’ll show when I do an X-ray view for presentation purposes, and that is great, but X-ray doesn’t let me actually go and add stuff. If I remove a component I’ll have to put it back again, which could be troublesome. Similarly, deleting a component and undoing that will undo my changes as well.
What to do?
(oops, .sku is upside down, but the same principle applies)
You could try hiding a face on the elevator, which would give you access inside. When you’ve finished, unhide the face.
Hope this helps.
dh
use a Section Plane…
john
Set up a wide viewing angle
normally easiest technique is to set up your layers so you can hide obstructions by turning them on/off quickly
For our projects
We divide each floor into a group or component and place on its own layer [L01, L02,L03 etc]
and then for each floor we have these main construction layers :-
wall-intr [includes doors] we can turn off when exporting for external renders
wall-extr [includes doors, windows]
ceil- ceiling planes
strc-beam - beams under floor above [helps understanding wall positions and cutouts]
strc-slab
strc-cols
That covers most internal visibility issues and allow us to just isolate structural, external or full model details.
finally you have the view back edges or xray options which allow you to snap to concealed objects
A quick visual of how to use a section plane.
Elevator Boarding at an angle 2.skp (1.3 MB)
See slightly revised .skp model.
I’m not sure I understand. Does this let me actually work inside or does it just provide a way to section out a portion of the model for viewing?
Also, apparently, hiding the back, for example, still does not let me work inside. It seems any operation I do still effects the “hidden” back panel. I basically need to temporarily remove the back wall, do my work inside the elevator, and then replace the wall without worrying about repositioning it correctly. Hmm… I suppose the only way is to carefully pull the wall away, which I’ve now made into its own component, along a single axis, do my work, and then slide it back into place, perhaps using precise measurements to make a uniform move out and in?
Oh…just tried that and all it did was stretch the back plane into a new cylinder so I can’t get around it to work inside. Very frustrating!
why don’t you just put the wall thats obstructing the view in a layer, set up a scene and save it with that layer turned off?
Hello there is a way of using the Dave Component Method, by using the components built in features. What you apply to one in edit mode is reflected to all instances of it in the model.
Make it a component and do a move copy, slide it in to free space.
Cut it to the clip board and then close the other instance’s.
Select paste in place and it is now “un-nested” and can be modified.
What ever you do to it will update to the original automatically and it / or any other item never has to change position or anything.
You can scale it up or down and when you are done with it close it from edit mode and delete it.
All the changes stay with the original, snug as a bug where it was all along. If there are any instances that you don’t want modified. Highlight them all/each and with a right click select Make Unique, this will isolate them…Peace…
Hi Scott,
As you build a model, make each logical portion of the object a Component.
That way, you’ll find viewing and modifying the model much easier.
See this video tutorial to learn about controlling visibility while editing Groups and Components.
Perhaps these video tutorials by Aidan Chopra will also help…
Thanks for this. I’m just getting to it now, but it will be a big help in the project going forward.