Hi everyone,
I think that Sketchup is missing a section manager for a long time.
Sections are an essential part of an architect’s life and Sketchup shines on architecture. An integrated workflow regarding sections between Sketchup and Layout would probably be a simple feature and another CAD killer feature.
My thoughts about the new features are the following:
1 - A manager/inspector window for Sketchup like the one for scenes that allows us to manage sections independently of scenes;
2 - Allow for multiple sections to be active in the model (without the need for nesting them in groups/comps)
3 - Alternativelly or complementary to #2, would be a way of creating multiplanar sections;
4 - A way to generate Correct “Section Profiles” (Styles Manager “Section Lines”):
4.1 - Allow us to see geometry coplanar with section planes;
4.2 - Allo us to hide style’s manager section lines wich currently you can either change color or thickness, but you can’t hide (you can hide edges and profiles with styles but you can’t hide section lines… why not?).
5 - Allow for a manager in Layout that would relate to the one in sketchup and would affect viewports independently of sketchup scenes - this manager would allow a viewport to:
5.1 - Use the active sections on an existing scene;
5.2 - Override the camera of a scene into a parallel projection/perspective view aligned to the section plane without the need to create a scene.
5.3 - Choose a different model style than the one displayed in viewport ONLY for the sectioncutface (Skalp deals with this through layers wich is also cumbersome).
6 - Allow Layout to impose selected sections overlay lines into any viewport using the viewport’s camera.
7 - Allow Layout to tag viewports per active sections.
Currently a careful management of sections implies:
1 - Layer per section as sections have no other attributes that allow us to manage them apart from active/inactive or globally visible/invisible.
2 - Section layer managing visibility of a section per scene, as having 20+ simultaneous sections in a model is a workflow killer. Specially as only a single of those sections can be active at a time.
3 - Scene name management related to sections so we can know wich scenes to use for Layout.
4 - Multiple scenes needed for displaying healed sections and section cut faces. These are needed to mask away the bad section line that happens on unclean models. Clean models are hard to acomplish and only on those the section line is useful.
Though I’m grateful that the above workflow is possible, it is very very cumbersome and requires a lot of work to setup. Some plugins help, (Super section, section cut face, skalp, etc…) but it’s not enough.
Best regards,
João
