jeff prince

@line-weight You have to rotate them if you want the view rotated 90 degrees 🙂

@Tom W. Yes, I mentioned that I used Section Line Instances to create the new views that I wanted. This involves repositioning, rotating, or 'reversing the direction' of the new section line markers the viewport generated. To me, that is a nice time saver simply using the 'reverse direction' of the duplicated marker. I can't believe I just learned this today 🙂

@Kevin Allen Yeah, I agree. I don't understand what is causing @Kevin C difficulty. The images below are all from the same model.. Plan, Section/Elevation, & OpenGL view. The section took 1 minute to generate and had hatches for tile mosaic on the spa and roof tiles on the pool cabana. The hardscapes cut in section have complete buildups represented by vector hatches. This is one of the few things I have been highly satisfied with in regards to Vectorworks, one model = many generated drawings with little effort.

@Tom W. I've been playing around with this a bit and just found out something that is probably basic and everyone knows.... You can mirror section viewports to generate new sections! Wish I would have known that earlier. Anyhow, check out the attached file. It started with 3 stacked viewports to describe the original section we were discussing. I did a lot of manipulation of those viewports to get the graphics to behave in a particular way and did not want to replicate that effort, so... By simply mirroring or copying the original 3 viewports, I made the other two section views. I used 'section line instances' on the cross section to get the new view I wanted. The only downside... the customized viewport cropping I did for the viewport depicting the GradingFill had to be redone. This is one of the reasons I like these discussions on the forum, accidental discoveries 🙂 Site-section-GRADING3.vwx

@Tom W. You don't have to discard the duplicate viewports if you move a section line. You can revise them using "Section Line Instances" from the Viewport's OIP. Sometimes this is faster than reconfiguring the graphics controls of multiple viewports. The only caveat... draw some reference lines as to where you want the revised section line to be so you have something to snap to between all the viewports you will modify.

@Tom W. and now you understand why I typically show minimal detail in a section and reserve the nitty gritty for details and wall sections 🙂

@Tom W. no problem, glad it helped.

@Tom W. Instead of manually drawing that detailed section, you could duplicate the viewport and change the settings on each viewport such that one is for the site model and one is for the building. This would allow you to show the building in detail and have it update as it changes. This eliminates the downside to manually drawing it when things change. I don't typically show detailed graphics on site sections, they usually aren't at a scale where you see such fine detail. Site modifiers don't allow for tunnels or overhead fill, so what most of us do is cut the site to the extent of the footing and then place a representation of the fill area. This can be done with an additional site model or solid extrusion, depending on your needs. Duplicating the viewport would also allow you some creative freedom like showing the site model beyond the cut in opengl while turning off the building features beyond the cut to depict a more traditional 2D section of the building as shown in the second image. Si te-section with building and duplicate viewports.vwx

@Tom W. I think it would benefit you greatly to watch the site modeling tutorial on Vectorworks University. There is one that deals with a parking lot and covers retaining walls and other site modifiers. That will get you up to speed on how to manipulate the site. It's not that difficult if you watch that particular tutorial and practice. In terms of your question about controlling the graphics of both the site model and the structural elements, the answer is right there in the example I posted. Look at the "Advanced Section Properties". Change the Cut Plane section to achieve what you want. This may involve creating an additional class for structural sections if you want to differentiate from the site model, but have all structural features to have the same graphics in section. Example, maybe you want the structural elements to have a grey fill and bold outline, see attached. Just get in there and play with it 🙂 Site-section with building.vwx

I would suggest stepping back even further... Step away from the computer, grab a piece of paper and pen, sketch out what you hope to accomplish with some notes for the levels/stories you hope to use. A classic architectural section would help immensely in understanding what you hope to accomplish.

@salukitd Hey Pat, Without knowing what your intentions are, it's hard to make a proper recommendation as there is a lot going on with your stories, levels, wall styles, and that extrude along a path(EAP). I would fix that EAP so that it is exactly 9' tall... It is currently short of that by a fraction of an inch. Then you could drop the level of the story "2-story" to 9' instead of 10' and they would meet. This is not really the optimal situation, but it would close the gap. Better would be to use the stories correctly to achieve your ultimate goal. @CiaMariaPia gave you a lot to digest that will help. If you are unfamiliar with stories, they can be a bear to utilize. Sometime it is easier just to draw on design layers with levels instead, depending on your ultimate goal.

I looked at your file and do not see the situation you have described. Below is a screenshot of what I see and a clip cube I took. The 2nd floor slab is in the correct location and the wall is sitting on it at the same level. The wall's cladding is configured to drop down to the ledge level -12". There is a gap between the 2nd floor features and the floor below, but that had more to do with the extrude around a path feature in the story below.

@doberman69 your statement about AutoCAD is incorrect. To get dims to behave correctly in that software, traditionally this was done by using a color that mapped to a pen thickness, or later as the software evolved, by assigning a line weight and/or plot style. Organized folks would do this by placing dims on AutoCAD layers and make everything bylayer. Same thing basically applies to Vectorworks, the lingo is just a little different. Even in manual drafting, we had to select which pencil or pen we were going to use before putting it to paper. i guess you are one of those folks that draws everything one the none class 😉

@doberman69 Good luck, you are going to need it.

You have two choices... Set your graphic characteristics using the attribute panel directly for each object or Use classes to control the graphic characteristics. I doubt this changed from 2020 to 2021, it's kind of fundamental to how the software works... Personally, I prefer to use classes so I can make changes to the entire drawing quickly. How were you setting up your "standards" in the past?