12 section viewport cleanup

[ptarmigan]

Take a section viewport: in Annotation View

There are some lines in elevation which you want to cover up. Doing so means creating a filled polygon and placing over the line(s). But you can't help the polygon abutting the actual section cut. The nice thick section line is spoilt by the polygon.

You can't move the polygon. Sending it backwards means the unwanted elevational lines reappearing. So what's best to do ?

ptarmigan

[panthony]

ptarmigan,

Are you using the same layer and class for the overlay lines as the layer and class of the section viewport? Or, are your sections generated with thier layer and class data intact?

I normally process all of my section views to a single line weight, color and fill which than allows me to draw over the top of the section in annotation mode with identical data.

Pete A

[ptarmigan]

Am I using the same layer/class for overlay lines and section view port ?

Yes.

I am resorting, for example, to drawing a single white line over an unwanted elevational line, trying to get its length just so to avoid interfering w section lines (white line on top of section cut)

Obviously, this is kinda cosmetic stuff and in the rough and ready of site or anywhere really, nobody much gives a stuff, but i'm interested to know how other architects tidy up their sections..

ptar

[panthony]

ptar,

I use lines, fills, hatch and whatever is needed to get sections the way I like them. Sometimes this involves drawing over entire areas of the section cut to hide unwanted detail. I have not found an easy way to reduce unwanted data in a section viewport... even when I spend considerable time in making a perfect model...just takes alot of work sometimes to get it right.

Pete A

[Taproot]

Ptarmigan,

Sections are definitely a weak link. Given the amount of time that it takes to model everything, one would expect to receive the return on investment in the form of auto sectioning. As we all know, however, there is invariably a fair bit of cleanup no matter how good your model is.

Some of the tricks I use:

In your example above, consider using a white filled rectangle (converted to a polygon) as a mask and turn off the edges on three sides of the rectangle. Then, change the line-weight of the fourth side to match whatever it is you are abutting. That way, the mask will render correctly.

If there is a lot of cleanup, I often will convert the section viewport to lines, copy it back to a design layer and scale it accordingly. This won't auto update, but toward the end of CD's, I find accuracy is more important than updatability.

A third technique is to convert a copy of the section viewport to lines and then paste it back into the annotation layer of the original section viewport. You can then turn off all of the layers of the viewport itself so that it is not trying to update itself. This holds the viewport as a place holder in case you ever want to re-render the section in the future. It also keeps it keyed to your section cut lines on the drawings (if you have them displayed).

These are all work-arounds which I try to avoid because they are clumsy. However, sometimes a dose of pragmatism is needed to get the end result that you want.