Arch SectionPlane

Other languages:

Grid

TDPage

BIM

THIS COMMAND IS PART OF THE INTEGRATED BIM WORKBENCH IN V1.0
This page has been updated for that version.

Menu location
Arch SectionPlane
Annotation → Section Plane
Workbenches
BIM
Default shortcut
S P
Introduced in version
-
See also
Draft Shape2DView

Description

The Arch SectionPlane tool places in the current document a section plane "thing", which defines a section or view plane. The "thing" takes its placement according to the current Draft Working Plane and can be relocated and reoriented by moving and rotating it, until it describes the 2D view you want to obtain. The Section plane object will only consider a certain set of objects. Objects that are selected when you create a Section Plane will be added to that set automatically. Other objects can later be added or removed from a SectionPlane object with the Arch Add component and Arch Remove component tools, or by double-clicking the Section Plane in the tree view.

The Section Plane alone won't create any view of its objects set. For that, you must create a TechDraw ArchView to create a view in a TechDraw page.

Usage

Optionally, set the Draft Working Plane to reflect the plane where you want to place the Section Plane.
Select objects you want to be included in your section view.
Press the Section Plane button or press S then P keys.
Move/rotate the Section Plane into correct position if needed.
Select the Section Plane if not selected already.
Use either Draft Shape2DView or TechDraw ArchView to create a view.

Options

The Section plane object will only consider a certain set of objects, not all the objects of the document. Objects can be added or removed from a SectionPlane object by using the Arch Add and Arch Remove tools, or by double-clicking the Section Plane in the tree view, selecting objects either in the list of in the 3D scene, and pressing the add or remove buttons.

With a section plane object selected, use the Draft Shape2DView tool to create a shape object representing the section view in the document.

Create TechDraw ArchView.

The Section Plane can also be used to show the entire 3D view cut by an infinite plane. This is only visual, and won't affect the geometry of the objects being cut.

Properties

DataOnly Solids: If this is True, non-solid objects in the set will be disregarded
ViewDisplay Length: The length of the section plane gizmo in the 3D view. Doesn't affect the resulting view
ViewDisplay Height: The height of the section plane gizmo in the 3D view. Doesn't affect the resulting view
ViewArrow Size: The size of the arrows of the section plane gizmo in the 3D view. Doesn't affect the resulting view
ViewCut View: If this is true, the whole 3D view will be cut at the location of this section plane.
ViewClip view: if this is true, it will clip the view to the display height and length of the section plane. This effectively turns the section plane into an orthographic camera, limiting the field of view.

The Arch SectionPlane with the clip view option will behave like a camera, limiting the field of view.

Tweaks

Adding manually a property named RotateSolidRender of type App::PropertyAngle to the section plane's View properties (right-click the properties view -> show all, right-click again -> add property) allows to rotate the render when using Solid mode. This is useful when a rendered view has for example both Arch and Draft elements, and the rendering of the Arch elements is rotated in relation to the Draft elements.

Scripting

See also: Arch API and FreeCAD Scripting Basics.

The SectionPlane tool can be used in macros and from the Python console by using the following function:

Section = makeSectionPlane(objectslist=None, name="Section")

Creates a Section object from objectslist, which is a list of objects.

Example:

import FreeCAD, Draft, Arch

p1 = FreeCAD.Vector(0, 0, 0)
p2 = FreeCAD.Vector(2000, 0, 0)
baseline = Draft.makeLine(p1, p2)
baseline2 = Draft.makeLine(p1, -1*p2)

Wall1 = Arch.makeWall(baseline, length=None, width=150, height=2000)
Wall2 = Arch.makeWall(baseline2, length=None, width=150, height=1800)
Structure = Arch.makeStructure(length=1000, width=1000, height=200)
FreeCAD.ActiveDocument.recompute()

BuildingPart = Arch.makeBuildingPart([Wall1, Wall2])

Floor = Arch.makeFloor([BuildingPart])
Building = Arch.makeBuilding([Floor, Structure])
Site = Arch.makeSite(Building)
FreeCAD.ActiveDocument.recompute()

Section1 = Arch.makeSectionPlane([Wall1, Wall2])
Section2 = Arch.makeSectionPlane([Structure])
Section3 = Arch.makeSectionPlane([Site])
FreeCAD.ActiveDocument.recompute()