How To Use Section Cuts In Sketchup

[Mei Li Wu]

Currently, when you cut a section in SU, Enscape renders the scene properly from a geometry standpoint, but shadows act as if all the cut geometry was still present. All renders, then, are completely dark on the interior. This basically makes the section tool completely useless in Enscape. The whole point of cutting a section is to see the interior of whats being cut, and it applies to vertical and horizontal section cuts. The only way to get around this is to fill the interior with lights or create the geometry in a way that the section cut actually turns geometry off - in complex models this is almost impossible. Filing it with lights produces an effect that 1) isn't really the look i'm going for, and 2) takes more time to set up when just having the cut geometry NOT cast shadows would solve everything. If some people like the way things currently work, then please implement a toggle switch to allow us to change the way things are rendered. I love literally everything about Enscape otherwise, but the way section cuts work is absolutely infuriating.

We would love to provide the ability to cast realistic shadows when section cuts/planes are applied - unfortunately, we can only render what we receive from SketchUp and even though the cuts are being transferred, the geometry itself still behaves in a way as if it would be un-cut, which is why Enscape also renders shadows still.

In the future we may able to provide a technical workaround for this, I'll definitely be forwarding your feedback once more, but we also hope for your understand and want to make you aware that we're on your side when it comes to this, as we would really like to provide what you're asking for, although are hands are unfortunately tied, at the moment that is.

The fact that the shadows in the section remain real is good. This allows you to assess the degree of solar insolation of the room. But you also need a button to turn off the shadows for to present a plan of the room with textures, although this can be done using a sketch up without a visualizer.

BTW, I've read in several posts in this forum that most of the issues regarding difficult situations to be rendered are "caused" by the realtime technology, limiting some calculations not to affect the speed (accurate reflections, section cuts,...). I am wondering if a solution could be to export the CURRENT model configuration whenever the user chooses ad additional "photoreal" option (the name is made up by me, substitute with whatever you like): you will have an extra export time time but you would be able to render the scene not realtime, so avoiding the limitations which block you guys.... I'm talking basically for still images, since I don't do videos atm....

pibuz , what you described in your last passage is something which has been requested before, a few times already, we wish it was as simple as introducing a "Photoreal" rendering quality setting for example, but it's not as straight forward and we'll still hit technical limitations to some extend - still, it's a feature request filed on our agenda to which I'm adding your upvote.

Btw, when you say the section cuts are forgotten between scenes, do you mean the active section cuts change from what they were just before, or what they were when the scene was last updated? In any case, you may want to look at the value of the Active Section Cuts checkbox in the Scenes inspector.

1)I have unchecked the box in model info to enable scene transitions. Often when I re-open the file after quitting sketchup the box reverts to being checked
2)Sketchup does not remember short cuts that are added

Well neither of those answers really explain what is happening. And now I have an additional problem. Several of the Section Planes are in my Building drawing in order to create building sections. To create interior elevations, I imported the Building drawing into a new drawing called Interior Elevations and added all the additional Section Planes. The Section Planes that are in the Building drawing are active for some reason - or at least one of them is active. I opened the Building drawing and made sure View Section Cuts was not selected and saved it. I then opened the Interior Elevations drawings and reloaded the Building Drawing. And yet one of the Section Planes must still be active somehow. How do I turn this off?
As for the Styles and the Section Cuts. I definitely need to create a new style for each Scene or the particular Active Cut that I am trying to view will not be saved.

so if you want to make sure that the active section is saved to each scene, you must update your scene, because the information that this section is active is stored to the scene when you update it. if you leave your scene before updating that change, then your change of which section is active will not be stored anywhere.

It does not matter how many styles you make, none of them will store the information of which section is active. ( only as Dave said, the setting to show or not show the active cut. And you dont need more that one style for that)

then this question might arise: you have zoomed and panned and orbited in order to select the section you want to set to the active cut. If you now update your scene then also your new camera position is stored to the scene, and you no longer have that old view of your section.

Dave,
This is of interest to me becuase, based on a recent thread, I switched to a single default style in SketchUp to simplify. I have multiple styles to choose from in a folder which I can access in Layout.

In the example you show, it appears the default style you are using allows for section cuts, maybe a section fill color of your choice and no section planes. So when you created each scene, did you turn on the section planes (from tool bar), select the section plane for the scene and make it the active section cut, then turn off the section planes from the tool bar, then create the scene.?
In this way, no pop-up window ocurrs asking about creating a new style when you create the scene as section planes are off.
Then in Layout, if you wanted to show a viewport of the bed with all of the section planes, you could choose from a style that has section planes ON and section cuts OFF.
Does this reflect what you are doing ?

Thanks so much. So rather than as I described manaully turning off section planes just use the style to toggle them off. Also, I was not aware of the use of the third selection in the Style Warning when a scene is created. Very useful.

I did not mean to sound like I was actually doing things correctly. I was only stating what has ensured my Scenes are remaining how I want them. I would love to have one Style. I see lots of good information here that I will try to follow. I was able to use the Outliner to deselect the active cut from the Building drawing that kept showing up my default no matter how many times I saved the Building drawing with no active section cuts (unless section cuts can somehow be active even if they viewing them is toggled off.) First I need to figure out what I am doing wrong.

I definitely am updating the scenes after creating them. I do it right in the scene manager window. Or I right click the tab. I am doing something else wrong, and I think it has to do with having section cuts in both the imported Building drawing as well as the Interior Elevations drawing.

If the scene has active section cuts checked, then you use view/toggle off section cut, the scene still saves the active cut, unless you update the scene. What often happens is people will turn off the section cut then re select the scene, negating the last action.

Unfortunately I did not use your templates or follow your setup for this restroom remodel because I originally thought it would be a simple task. But then I had to include the original building Revit file (converted to ACAD and then SketchUp) and the complexity of the project exploded along with the file size. I probably should have just started fresh at that point. Oh well.
What I am learning from this thread is that I need to dive into the concept of Styles because I clearly my understanding is superficial.

I've got an issue where my imported sketchup model only cuts with a section box from two sides, as shown in the attached image. This is proving difficult to produce sections as it shows the imported elements in front of the section. I have tried creating a generic family model and cutting it through the section box, but it has not worked. Has anyone got any ideas on how to fix this?

Section Tool is included in the SU Podium V2.5 and V2.6 for SketchUp 2017 and above 64 bit Win/ Mac version. SketchUp sections alone, can not be rendered. You must use Podium's Section Tool or another extension that makes true cuts in the geometry, to render sections.

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