We need a faster way to relocate a section cut line (starting from its associated section viewport)

[line-weight]

Often I'll be looking at a section viewport, on a sheet layer, and realise I need to change the position of the section line that generates it.

 

Doing this is tedious - unless I'm missing some quicker way of doing it.

 

Many of my section viewports don't have an associated section line on an "active" viewport within the drawing set.

 

My process is:

 

- select the viewport

- go to the OIP

-scroll to the bottom

- press "section line instances"

- select "viewports"

- find what I call my "section control viewport" in the list

- put a tick next to it

- press "activate"

- zoom out and find the section line, in the annotation space of this big mess of a viewport which is where I keep an instance of any section line I've used/want to adjust

- move that line to where I want it, wit some difficulty, because that viewport might not clearly show the objects I want to position the section cut relative to

- exit the annotations

- try and remember which sheet the section viewport was on, find it in the list and go back there.

 

What I'd like:

 

- right-click on the viewport

- get an option "relocate section line" and select it

- be taken to an orthogonal view of the model, showing only layers & classes contained within the viewport I've come from, with the section line clearly highlighted and ready to be moved

- move it

- click "return to viewport".

Edited September 8, 2023 by line-weight

[Tom W.]

4 minutes ago, shorter said:

What I mean is, each section viewport has a single section line associated to it, or should.  Right click, ‘navigate to section line’ should be sufficient to take you to the section line instance.

 

of course, if you have copied the section viewport and it has no section line… that’s another story.

 

This gets to the nub of the discussion. There is no defining section line: sure, there is the one you use to create the VP but all subsequent lines are not instances or copies, they are multiples of the definition. Also as you allude to you can have a section VP + chose not to display a section line for it anywhere. Likewise you might create a section VP on the Design Layer then immediately delete the resultant section line + enable it in a VP instead: would 'navigate to section line' take you to the original - now deleted - SL on the DL or the subsequent version in the VP? This is why I think the idea of a standalone defining section line in its own special edit group is a good idea. Keep the defining section line + those you display in VPs as two separate things.

[shorter]

43 minutes ago, Tom W. said:

 

This gets to the nub of the discussion. There is no defining section line: sure, there is the one you use to create the VP but all subsequent lines are not instances or copies, they are multiples of the definition. Also as you allude to you can have a section VP + chose not to display a section line for it anywhere. Likewise you might create a section VP on the Design Layer then immediately delete the resultant section line + enable it in a VP instead: would 'navigate to section line' take you to the original - now deleted - SL on the DL or the subsequent version in the VP? This is why I think the idea of a standalone defining section line in its own special edit group is a good idea. Keep the defining section line + those you display in VPs as two separate things.

It does all seem unnecessarily complicated, and not in a good way.

[shorter]

Perhaps it's workflow related.

 

In our models, Section Viewports would only exist for GA sections and elevations (because the model is max. GA LOD).  3D Detailing does not happen in the model.  It's coordinated 2D and placed traditionally on the sheet as a standard viewport.

 

Therefore we would rarely need or have multiple section viewports on top of one another.

 

However, I can imagine a tiled sheet (i.e. 4 drawings of a single section, for example) because of the size of the building and therefore potentially need 4 section line instances, but even then, these would be located in a key plan, most likely and therefore be independent.

 

It might be useful to be able to associate one section line to more than one viewport if in this example the section line were placed in modelspace instead.

[line-weight]

1 hour ago, shorter said:

Place it in a design layer.

 

Could do I guess. I think it would mess up a preference of mine, which is to have the end tags of section lines outside the crop box of the viewport.

 

In the current setup, I don't think it would offer any advantage.

 

In thinking this through, I've realised another limitation of section lines which is that I don't think I can have a linked/defining (vertical) section line on elevations as well as plans. Again, this is different to how gridlines work; almost all issues with section lines as far as I can see would be solved if they simply behaved in the same way as gridlines.

 

They are after all pretty much exactly the same thing, planes which pass through the model and which you want to indicate on certain viewports.

[Tom W.]

18 minutes ago, line-weight said:

almost all issues with section lines as far as I can see would be solved if they simply behaved in the same way as gridlines.

 

And I believe @Matt Panzer said elsewhere that this was the intention in future

[Matt Panzer]

2 hours ago, Tom W. said:

2 hours ago, line-weight said:

almost all issues with section lines as far as I can see would be solved if they simply behaved in the same way as gridlines.

 

And I believe @Matt Panzer said elsewhere that this was the intention in future

 

👍