horizontal section viewport

[Ride]

Can someone please explain the logic around horizontal section viewport visibilities? What I want is to see objects above the cut plane, in a dashed line, in grey colour, or at least a lighter line thickness. I'm drawing a plan section of some cabinets, and I want to see the line of the counter above them.

 

Why is this so difficult to do? I don't understand. I can generally get it work, after about 10 minutes of settings after setting try to change things to dashed hidden line, linetypes, grey colours, etc etc.  Object display, hidden object display. C'mon. Must be a better way. In fact right now, I can't get it to work at all. I guess I'll just manually draw it in....

 

VW2020, SP6

Macbook Pro, mid-2015, Mojave.

 

[markdd]

I feel your pain and have found some inconsistencies which make it even harder to fathom. There is virtually nothing written in the manual.

 

I submitted a bug about this a couple of weeks ago which is being investigated. I hope there will be an answer back soon.

[Tom W.]

@Ride obvious question but is the 'Border' class visible in the VP?

These settings work for me.

It is the 'Cut Plane + Display' settings, which are slightly different, that have the bug.

[Ride]

 

13 minutes ago, Tom W. said:

@Ride obvious question but is the 'Border' class visible in the VP?

These settings work for me.

It is the 'Cut Plane + Display' settings, which are slightly different, that have the bug.

 

Ok, can you explain it to me? What settings would you use to see the counter above a set of cabinets, in a dashed line, light grey. Do I adjust the object display, hidden object display? Is the display set to dashed hidden line, or do I have to manually assign a linetype and colour for the class?

 

Right now I've set everything to dashed hidden line, but all the lines are solid.

 

To your question, the only class not visible in the VP is the nonplot class.

Edited March 5, 2021 by Ride

[Tom W.]

Trying to visualise it. Is it essentially just the front edge of the countertop we're talking about? Plus any returns to the cabinets? In which case the counter wouldn't be a hidden object, it's just an object before the cut plane. So you need to enable 'Display Extents before Cut Plane' then it's the 'Object Display' settings you're concerned with. Just choose the class the counter is in + set it to Hidden Line + set the attributes accordingly. I think

 

Make sure the class the countertop is in is visible in the VP class settings.

 

You just need to imagine you're at the section line looking backwards: the objects you can see are covered by 'Object Display' + any objects obscured by these objects are covered by 'Hidden Object Display'.

 

If you have no hidden objects then I guess the settings shown in your screen shots will have no effect in the VP.

[Ride]

Ok, I got it. I understand about the display extents before cut plane settings. What is not abundantly clear is why there is a section for hidden object display, and then object display. But then within those settings are options for object display, as well as dashed hidden line pen attributes. Why would I need dashed hidden line pen attributes within the object display settings? Wouldn't that be controlled by the hidden object display settings?

 

Either way, thank you for responding to my queries. It was very helpful.

 

 

[Tom W.]

No probs. I'm not an expert on it by any means but did learn it recently so keen to confirm I've understood it correctly...

 

13 hours ago, Ride said:

What is not abundantly clear is why there is a section for hidden object display, and then object display.

 

Basically when you're stood at the section line looking forward (beyond the cut plane), the 'objects' are visible in front of you by default, so it's only 'hidden objects' you have the option to display or not display.

 

By contrast, when you're looking 'backwards' (before the cut plane), no objects are visible obviously because they're all behind you. So you can elect to first see the 'objects' then secondly the 'hidden objects': objects obscured by the visible objects. It's exactly the same thing as beyond the cut plane just this time you have to positively select for the 'visible' objects to be displayed because they are behind you so invisible by default.

 

13 hours ago, Ride said:

Why would I need dashed hidden line pen attributes within the object display settings? Wouldn't that be controlled by the hidden object display settings?

 

I suppose if you have a perspective section viewport for example + there is an object before the cut plane you want to show in Dashed Hidden Line rendering, these settings allow you to do that. To be honest, in few the examples I've used these settings for, I've only ever shown hidden objects beyond the cut plane or objects before the cut plane (never hidden objects before the cut plane) + I've only ever used hidden line rendering using a dashed line style. But it's good that the hidden object before the cut plane settings are there plus the option to use hidden line rendering, just so you know any display configuration is achievable should you need it.

 

What is a shame is that the object override settings in the 'Cut Plane + Display' dialog available when you edit section in place is not working. These settings allow you to specify display settings by object rather than by class, giving you a lot more control over which particular objects are displayed + which aren't. Like @markdd said a bug report was recently submitted for this:

 

 

Edited March 6, 2021 by Tom W.

[Tom W.]

@Ride I thought I better check all this myself because I've only ever used the settings in vertical section viewports, not a horizontal section viewport. I have a drawing of a kitchen I tried it out on + initially it wasn't behaving as expected but I think that was because my countertops were auto-hybrids but when I replaced them with Floor objects it worked as expected.

 

So the objects in red + green are located before the cut plane.  The red object's display is controlled by the 'Object Display...' settings. And the green object's display by the 'Hidden Object Display...' settings.

 

 

Here's a different version with just 'Objects' before cut plane displayed:

 

[Matt Panzer]

 

[Ride]

Thanks. This is helpful. I'll have to spend some time on my own files and play with the settings to see the effects. At least there seems to be some logic to this, finally.