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I believe that I am one of the minority in that I maintain the building model through the construction drawings. Perhaps, my rose colored glasses are too deep a tint, or I'm a "true believer" in the BIM concept. Tedious as it may be, the 3D building is almost achievable in VW except ... for the matter of sections!

As I see it, they can be done in three ways:

1. The tried and true method, cut a section or section viewport, convert to lines and then draft away manually. Slow, but very accurate.

2. Use section viewports and annotate like crazy.

3. Use section viewports with very little annotatation and assume that everything will get worked out in the details.

In my opinion, #3 doesn't work. For myself, I need to think through the construction as I draw. A section needs to be predicated on framing dimensions, material offsets, etc. This level of complexity needs to be accounted for in the section drawing process.

#2 also doesn't work. With half of your material in the annotation and half in the model, a change of any kind requires so much movement between views that it takes the fun out of drafting. Let's see: move a wall - switch to VP - annotate - move wall plate annotation, insulation, etc - go back to model view - move another wall ... laborious!

#1 works. But hey, why did I invest all that time in modeling everything if I only get to use it as a rough underlay. With the number of lines that I have to delete from the underlay, lineweight cleanup, and class rework, I could have redrawn the section from scratch (well it still takes longer - but not much!).

So, to this day, the section remains in my opinion the "bane" of VW. OK, I've duly expressed my opinion, and this is old news to most of us, so why am I bringing it up.

I'd really like to propose that Nemetschek take a hard look at the future goals for this side of the program.

If VW is REALLY planning to go the route of BIM, then:

1. We need a section display mode that allows interactivity. That is, a "stack layers" view that displays in section view (Sketchup has a good example of this, Archicad too). That way, you can see the building in section while being able to modify the elements.

2. We also need a floor and roof tool that utilize the same functionality as the wall tool i.e. be able to have multiple cavities that can be classed.

3. Finally, we need the ability for sectioned 3D solids to display a 2D fill (hatch, gradient, etc).

I know it's a lot to ask, but I'm looking way ahead and figure that the release of the most current version is the best time to ask for future functionality.

In the meantime, if interactive 3D sections is programmatically impossible, then we need to consider making the 2D form of sections more workable. To my knowledge, converting a Section VP to lines will now only convert the sectioned objects (not the background objects). In order to do this, one must consistently rescale the lines from 1:1 to whatever design layer they are working on - why not just export the lines to the right layer at the native layer's scale?

Thanks for listening.

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Matthew, good summation of what is needed and why. I suspect that for the program to take that significant step you suggest would involve a major change to how VW stores and uses the model information.

Being able to make real changes in any view, including Design Layer Sections, would provide a real boost to productivity, and would remove that tag of VW not being a real 3D architectural program.

PS Optimise Drawing from Vectorbits can take some of the tedium out of your method 1.

- Cut and paste your 2D generated linework into a separate drawing file.

- Run Optimise Drawing using appropriate choices from the selection set.

- Work over the result to get it looking how you want it

- Paste the result back into your original drawing file..

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#1 works. But hey, why did I invest all that time in modeling everything if I only get to use it as a rough underlay.

While I agree with many of your points and would definitely like to see at least as much improvements as you:

A BIM and detailed working drawings are two entirely different woks of tofu. BIM-sections and conventional sections don't even belong to the same diet.

A BIM-section (eg. the one we have in VW, with certain improvements) is not a "rough overlay": it is all there is - and needs to be - for the BIM.

Apart from this, I must say that I'm a bit curious about the angst sections seem to cause. To me, sections are an important design tool. I've done jobs where they have been more important than floor plans. Well, it seems that Taproot has somewhat similar view ("A section needs to be predicated on...")

Finally: in domestic jobs (houses etc), forget BIM. If "framing and material offsets" are driving the job, BIM has nothing to offer. It is for big jobs and big clients.

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I wholeheartedly agree with the points Matthew has made regarding sections - VW needs to make both options of section drawing easier, or choose a direction to concentrate on. With the introduction of Section Viewports recently, and indeed the introduction of 3D tools and capabilities some time ago, VW looks like it is heading in the 'pure 3D mode' direction (which I happen to agree with).

However, as Petri said - small jobs can be done manually and a certain size is required before all this becomes worth it. The capability for larger jobs needs to still be there though, or people will just 'jump ship' to other packages.

I think it's worth noting that a program can't do absolutely everything if you want the flexibility to change things - but that's a subject for another topic, and probably another era in computing and architectural practice.

For the immediate future, perhaps small moves such as placing section viewports on design layers, so they can be referenced to details later, would satisfy the current shortcomings of these viewports. And then having parametric constraints capable of linking points in objects to points in the section viewports (ie. constrain a distance between a skirting and a wall/floor point in a section, and it moves when that point moves) - as a reasonable, immediately possible, solution?

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NNA missed an opportunity with DLVPs. They chose to create a new Layer Linking protocol with DLVP Management Control features. Unfortunately it only allows you to have one view of the linked model information on the destination Design Layer - this view being set by the View orientation of that Design Layer.

With the Model View Tool they already had a layer Linking protocol which provided the ability to have different views of the same model information on the one Design Layer. If they had added the DLVP Management Control features to that protocol we would have had a very useful capability. It would have given us Design Layer Live Elevations that could be managed. If Design Layer Sections could have been added to that it would have been a very good capability.

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Hmmmm,

thanks Mike - I didn't quite realise that DLVP cannot have different views to the design layer they reference. Major shortcoming as they can only be really useful for plans at this point in time - sections and elevations seem now to be back to annotations of SLVPs.

Perhaps the ability to enable SLVPs to reference other sheet layers would be useful then, and a workaround that is currently possible? Or even allow a SLVP to reference another SLVP...

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Patrick, DLVPs can have a view other than the source layer. The "view" is determined by the View orientation set in the destination layer. If it is set to a Front View that is what you will see.

The advantage of the Model View tool is that you can have different views of the model on the same Design Layer. The disadvantage is these can't be managed like DLVPs can. Hence the missed opportunity.

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Agreed with Peter. We found some problems, too:

1- An interactive section tool (like sketchup or Boa).

2- If we are going to have section viewports, the way it behaves now, it need a close relationship with the annotations: Linked and more dynamic in the process of updating.

3- Not to the hybrid approach as it is. Maybe a more flexible one. Plan views must be straight cuts to the model. Objects like doors can have an option to show properly in that SVP. Walls: the same. We had found two major problems in this approach: A) The objects over the cutting plane don't show (projections) and we don't have any control on it. B) Doors.

4- The idea to have a way to show components, internally in 3d objects, Imagine an extrusion, solid, or nurbs shell witch we can introduce components like walls.

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I agree with Matthew.

In addition, the nature of Architecture always has changes, large or small, so (IMHO) it's always advantages to have all the elevations and sections linked to the model therefore saving time when it comes to changes. And these sections or elevations HAVE to be correct either with working drawings or BIM.

My 2 cents.

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I would just like to remind NNA of the desire to have Design Layer Section Viewports.

They would be a great help in detailing, but also great under-layers for interior elevations. It is just faster drafting in design layers than in annotation layers. Having live updating is really useful. It makes it easy for someone less familiar with the whole project (like an interior designer) to focus on the elevations, and quickly see the consequences of larger changes.

One more thing;

Currently snapping in section viewports is only on the section parts, but not on lines in the background. It would be very useful for this to be a toggle in the object info pallet.

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