Section Plugin Sketchup
Bazara Benavides
The way SketchUp closes solids when sectioning them is visual trickery within SketchUp itself, there is NO actual faces there, you'll notice that if the object being sectioned ISNT a solid then Sketchup won't generate the fake face and it'll appear hollow.
TIG has a plugin that will generate a face(s) where a section cuts ... I f remember its called 'Section Cut Face' and once the plugin is installed you simply right click on the section and select 'Generate cut face' (or something like that) and you'll get new geometry on its own Tag/Layer ... It'll often need cleaning up. Scalp that Epix3D mentioned is more powerful but costs.
Perhaps in the future, there may be a way to receive additional geometry information natively from SketchUp, through which we could then also create a more realistic lighting/shadow casting output for section cuts, but this may very well be something they would have to add so we could make use of it in the first place. I'll forward your feedback goncalo.t3 in any case, thanks.
We finally got solid sections a few years ago. Around the same time, a plug-in called Skalp came out that enabled us to generate sections fills with multiple graphics/materials. I never mastered Skalp, and it appears to be moribund.
Now that we pay $300 a year in reliable income to Trimble, how about a native feature that lets us add different colors and materials to the solid section cut?
Thanks! Glad to see that Sketchucation is still a going concern, and thank you for making plugins. Any chance the Section Cut Face plug-in allows one to assign different materials to different Groups/Components being sectioned? That would essentially do what I originally put in the wishlist at the start of this thread.
My features request was to be able to assign the actual Section Fill material, as seem in Styles->Edit, to individual Groups and Components being sectioned. Additionally, that Section Fill material would need to include whatever raster images are in a given material. The current Section Fills in Styles->Edit. removes the raster and just applies color.
I added the texture to the In Model textures before creating the section cut face. Then it was in the list of materials to choose from. You could make multiple section cuts and use different materials.
Advanced Features for Section Planes: SectionPlane Tools is a comprehensive toolkit designed to enhance the capabilities of working with Section Planes in SketchUp. This plugin expands the utility of Section Planes, enabling faster and more efficient modeling. It leverages the cutting lines generated by Section Planes to create new faces and elements within your model swiftly.
Quick Internal Section Faces Creation: One of the standout features of SectionPlane Tools is its ability to generate internal section faces easily. For instance, cutting through walls can instantly create floor faces or define interior zones. This feature streamlines the process of visualizing and editing the internal structures of your model.
Efficient Section Fill and Wrap Faces: Besides internal sectioning, this tool allows for creating filled section faces from cut lines and comprehensive wrap faces that encompass entire model levels, like outlining the perimeter of a building floor. This functionality is invaluable for detailed planning and visualization of architectural and interior design projects.
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I have a question regarding the section cut. If I'm correct, the plugin cuts the model, but leaves some "holes" on the walls and floors. Do you fill the spaces in photoshop later or there is another way?
Alex let me start by saying your tutorials are by far the best for architectural rendering I have used. I found this one and the previous one particularly useful at university. I was wondering if you are planning on doing a tutorial where you show us how to add greenery and planting such as ivy to facades, fences and columns. Theres alot of people as well as me who would find this very usful !
@James,
Thanks for the kind words. I covered that topic somewhat in my landscape tutorial : -video-landscape-via-photoshop.html . I have a few more things I want to cover before I do another landscape tutorial. Take care
hi, ive tried this technique and it didnt cut my building. maybe because there are many components and groups inside but i'm doing a large scale building, it will be hard if i want to explode everything.
Hi Puteri,
It could be that you have so much geometry it is just overloading your system or taking an extremely long time. Something you could try is take sections of you building and copy them into another model using the "paste in place" option and use the zorro plugin on each section individually. Then just paste them all back into a single model when your done.
@Vernica & Charlotte,
There are a few things that could be causing the problem. Sometimes, when the model is extremely large and complex, the plugin has trouble cutting through all of the geometry and can cause the program to crash. Therefore if you have certain high poly items that you can turn off such as trees and cars, that may help.
Also, try exploding all of the groups and components. While the plugin can work with groups and components, sometimes it works better when everything is exploded.
If none of the above suggestions work, try copying all of the geometry into a new model.
Your problem has happened to me a couple of times and the above solutions tended to solve the crashing.
I need to add something to this tutorial here(also the XRAY TUORIAL)
The plugin ZORRO2 crashes most often so i tried doing things some other way and I think this will solve many people`s problem.
Many of you, though, will already be familiar with the basics of SketchUp and want to take your modeling skills to the next level. While the tools that come with the software are useful for most everyday tasks, anyone who has used SketchUp for more than a few days will know that there are a plethora of plugins out there that facilitate amazingly complex forms and ingenious time-saving processes.
Among its many functions, this hugely useful plugin enables you to create an array along a path. A series of components can be quickly placed in a predefined arrangement, perfect for balustrades like the one shown above. A full tutorial can be found here, and you can download the plugin here.
One of the most ingenious plugins on this list, Helix Along Curve enables you to create helix tubing along a predefined path. When combined with Bezier Spline and Component Stringer add-ons, you can also model a perfect chain with individual links. A full tutorial on constructing the form above is available here, and you can download the Helix Along Curve plugin here.
Simply add a face to your section plane with this useful plugin. The face can be quickly modified, changing its color for presentation purposes, and it can also be set to update automatically as you edit your model. The add-on can be downloaded here.
When combined with the QuadFaceTools plugin, SubD can be used to produce curvilinear volumes like the one shown above with clean, rationalized subdivisions. This is helpful when modeling complex domes and parametric shells. SubD can be downloaded here, while QuadFaceTools can be found here.
Another brilliant extension created by Fredo6, Animator enables you to creating moving parts with your SketchUp model with ease. Simply create the first and last frames of the movement you want, then hit play and watch your dynamic model shift into motion. Download Animator here.
Do you create your own section elevations strictly in AutoCAD? We'll show you how to use SketchUp to generate elevations during this process while also using Land F/X to confirm the final outcome of your design. We'll start in AutoCAD using the Land F/X SketchUp Connection tool and work our way through modeling the terrain while showing some interesting SketchUp plugins. Finally, we'll bring our section elevations back into AutoCAD and put everything back together for a final product.
Note: The following catalog of content covered in this webinar is time stamped to allow you to follow along or skip to sections of the video that are relevant to your questions. You can also search for content on this page using the FIND command in your browser (CTRL + F in Windows, Command + F in Mac OS.)
Merging a section and elevation view. It includes an elevation view as well as cuts to show context.
Sending layers and blocks into SketchUp using the Land F/X SketchUp Connection tool (10:10)
Answer: It took a while to get the techniques down, but once we did, we were able to do the prep relatively quickly, if not in real time. It was a lot of work because of the copies that were necessary to show the different steps.
Recently I wanted to revisit one of those projects, and found that the original download site for the plugin was gone. So I dug the script out of one of my old SketchUp installs and discovered that it won't load into SketchUp 2015. It looks like there is an error in how the plugin adds itself to the menu system.
I pulled the Ruby script open in TextWrangler, and found the UI section. It looks like the code is using and out of date function to add itself to a UI menu that doesn't exist in newer versions of SketchUp...
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