Multiple Section Fills!

SketchUp Feature Requests
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Multiple Section Fills!!! Please let us assign more than one fill to a section cut, and let that fill be a material, not just a color.
This could be easily done by creating a Section Cut Fill column in Tags. That seems simplest, or perhaps each group or component could be assigned a Section Cut Fill? There are many ways to make it work.
Just imagine how delightful (and fast!) it would be to automatically make beautiful section cuts and construction details - without manually drawing the section or detail as its own Sketchup object.

(Yes, I know this is a long-running request, and yes I know about the Curic and Skalp plug-ins. They do not do this, they automate the work-around we use now, which is to assign materials and colors to section cut geometry that exists as its own group or component.)

I actually had a Sketchup Product Manager named Peter Burr request that I email him to talk about this further, back in 2022. Alas, by the time I saw his post and replied, he was no longer working at Sketchup. If any product managers would like to talk about it, please let me know.

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This is still my top native wishlist feature too.

Either a section fill material by tags (as you’re proposing) or a section fill material via container material as this post proposed a couple years ago: Proposal of how to solve the section-fill-color problem

I’d probably be partial to tags, but beggers can’t be choosers.

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Looks like this post isn’t gaining much traction. C’est la vie. I know this feature has been requested ad nauseum for at least ten years, so seeing it yet again might not be the most inspiring thing. I only posted about it because I was told that this is the best way to gain the attention of managers at Sketchup.

If anyone else out there feels like this would be a valuable feature, please like the post, or reply.

I have been using Sketchup for 22 years now and have used it and Layout exclusively for architectural drawing production since 2008. The program has gotten steadily better and I am not here on the forum to complain about the lack of development. (The fact that I am basically not on the forum at all might also explain the post’s lack of traction.)

Many feature requests, including very good ones, go against the core Sketchup philosophy of simplicity. For example, a wall tool with multiple layers for studs, plywood, siding, etc is probably better handled by a plug-in like Profile Builder or MeDeek Wall. Accordingly, I don’t advocate for that sort of tool becoming a core part of Sketchup. An option for multiple section fills, however, be they colors, materials, or hatches, however, is not industry specific and it is not bloat - it would be an elegant addition to Sketchup’s core, simple, capacities.

I know, too, that Sketchup is not a solids modeler, but the ability the program has possessed since day one - the ability to create a section fill - tells me that this feature request doesn’t likely ask too much of the core software.

If you would like to see this feature added before the Sketchup guys move on entirely to more glamorous features (e.g. AI rendering), please consider liking this post.

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Not only that but the Native, create group from slice gives you the ability to fill it with a material.

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Yeah, that was my worry - that it had all the traction it ever would - but someone at Sketchup suggested I post the request again, so I did. It would be so nice, and so useful, and seems so easy to add as a feature (compared to AI renderings, to say the least)
I’ve been making 2D section cut objects for years and years by simply drawing a face right near my section plane, grouping it, and then intersecting it with the model. I imagine the Section Cut Face plugin does the same thing. I then apply materials to the faces in my section group, or I delete the faces and overlay the lines with 2D components I’ve made over the years that represent 2x4s, LVLs, steel beams, insulation batts, etc… It makes gorgeous sections and details that I can easily annotate in Layout, but it takes a lot of time. If I want to move that section cut in the model, then it takes even more time to edit my 2D section cut object. If I change the model…ditto. Being my own Skalp or Curic plugin is fine - I love the look of what I can produce - but when I imagine how much even better it could be…

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I will definitely try to Section Cut Face plug-in, thanks for letting me know that it does more than I had imagined it did!

I, too, add a scrim between my section face object and the model behind it in order to make the section face object/view/geometry/materials pop. You are correct that the feature I’m asking for would still require workarounds like that scrim to make things look perfect, it would also require serious layer and tag management to keep unwanted things out of the section, but it would still be huge improvement.

As for how to do the Material Section Fills… I think section fill by Tag in the Tag menu would probably be easiest, though I could also imagine a “section fill material” option in Entity Info for any group or component.

Sketchup provides so many possibilities, simply by being so simple. In the beautiful picture you attached, only the engine block is sectioned. Were I try to that in Archicad or Revit or Vectorworks, where sections tend to global and do not have the option of being placed inside individual bits of geometry… I imagine that would require a lot of workarounds. Whereas in Sketchup, it’s do-able with only the work-around of needing a 2D object for your section cut material. Imagine, though, if you could assign that diagonal hand-drawn material as the default section fill, it would be even easier than it is now - no 2D object needed. And if you could assign one material to the cut through the block and other to the cut through the cylinder liner, then I’d be in work-flow heaven.

The fact that so much of my work has multiple section cuts at varying distances from the camera is one of the strongest incentives for me to keep using Sketchup. Archicad has the multiple section fills that I long for, but cutting individual sections in individual geometry? I don’t know how to do it in Archicad, I’ve seen if done (kind of) in demos, but not really, not like Sketchup. It’s kind of like trying to directly edit a parametric object. Vectorworks and Archicad get closer each year, but only in Sketchup can you simply open it up and make whatever changes you want.

Anyway, I’ve been using Sketchup professionally for 22 years, as I wrote earlier, but in all that time, I’ve given nothing back to the community. Kudos to you and the other Sages for all you do, and to all the amazing plug-in creators.

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Hi @bradodonnell → I feel you and while I am - very reluctantly - beginning to explore extension solutions for this problem I really, really, really feel this should be a native function as well.

All extensions that solve this create 2D geometry on top of the 3D geometry. This feels wrong on a fundamental level working in 3D. The way Sketchups section cuts are working is fine already - it virtually cuts, basically “exposing” without actually creating geometry that could potentially be not updated when the 3D Model changes. All that is missing is the differentiation of how the hatches are being displayed.

I still stand by my proposes solution to use the data that is already there (materials) and displaying the hatches based on that. It would be the “Sketchup-way” of doing it as it would not add ANY complexity or clutter for users that don’t care for it. Except for one additional field in the material editor to define a hatch pattern for a material it would be invisible.

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Feature request: each SketchUp Solid would have its own native section fill, user defined, (as an attribute (a material or texture, think of hatching) assigned to each solid object as an option)

Once again: this would have beeen solved with solely one extra attribute (user defined) per ‘SketchUp Solid’ object, an attribute which defines the ‘mass’, the texture of the inside of the solid, thus the section fill.
Unfortunately developpement took a different route. See:

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