Explore the functionalities and benefits of Navisworks' section tool in this article. Learn how to enable, manipulate and save section planes within a viewpoint, in order to gain better internal perspectives of your model.
Key Insights
- The article covers the use of Navisworks' section tool, focusing on how to enable and manipulate section planes within a viewpoint for better visibility inside a model.
- It provides a step-by-step guide on creating viewpoints, enabling sectioning, altering the alignment of the section plane, and saving these settings within specific viewpoints.
- The author further demonstrates how to create multiple section planes for different levels of a model, and how to use the sectioning tools to toggle on or off the visibility of the section plane or the transform tool.
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Welcome back to the Navisworks video series. In this video, I'll be covering the Section tool. I'll teach you how to enable the Section plane and how to manipulate that Section plane within a Viewpoint so that you can see within your model. We'll be using the Metogate.nwd file, so let's open that up right now.
Just hit the Open button; it's in your Lesson 1 folder as Metogate.nwd. The first thing we need to do is create a Viewpoint—one that we can easily use to manipulate our Section tool. The one I like to use is from above, like this. Once you get to a position that looks like this, you can right-click on your Saved Viewpoints panel and then go to Save Viewpoint, and we'll save this one as Section 1. The Section plane that divides your model resides within a Viewpoint, so you have to have one to start with. Once you have that Viewpoint set, go to the Viewpoint tab and select Enable Sectioning. This turns on the Section plane, and you might see something like I see here, where my plane is oriented vertically and it's cutting everything to the west of that plane in my building.
For the first section, we want to have a horizontal Section plane that cuts the model from the plane upward in the Z direction. Once you enable sections, you'll see that our Sectioning Tools tab appears, and the Enable Sectioning button is turned blue, which means it's toggled on. Our Mode tells us we're using Planes instead of Box, which is the other option. We're just going to use one plane for now, and it's telling us our current plane is called Plane 1, which is set vertically.
We can change this by selecting Alignment and then choosing Top. Navisworks aligns Plane 1 with the top, which corresponds to this direction on the ViewCube. Just like we used the Transform tool before, we can select Move to toggle it on. The button turns blue, and our Gizmo appears.
Around the Gizmo, you’ll see the Section plane that we’re using. You can move the Section plane by selecting one of the axes and dragging that axis up or down. I'm dragging along the Z direction. If you try to drag along the Y or X axes, it won’t affect the cut, because the Section plane stays within the same orientation. However, you can use those axes to reposition the Gizmo itself, especially if it’s far off-screen. Moving it above the model makes it more visually useful.
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So, go ahead and set the Section plane to the first-floor level. To save this Section location, right-click on the Section 1 Viewpoint and select Update. That now saves this position to the Viewpoint. If I switch to any other Viewpoint, like External 1, you'll notice the building is no longer cut, and Enable Sectioning is turned off. When I return to Section 1, Enable Sectioning is turned back on, and the Section plane is in the saved position.
Let’s continue by making another section—this time of the second floor. We’re working with information we already have. Start by right-clicking on Section 1 and selecting Add Copy. Now we have an exact replica of our Section 1 Viewpoint. Rename that Viewpoint to Section 2, and then move the Section plane to a comfortable position at the second-floor level.
To save the location of this Section plane, right-click on Section 2 and choose Update. Now we have Section 1 and Section 2 positioned. Let’s move on to Section 3, or the third floor.
Select Add Copy. Rename Section 2 to Section 3, and move the Section plane up to the third-floor level. Right-click on Section 3 and select Update to save.
If you’d like to hide the Gizmo and the Section plane from the screen, go to the Sectioning Tools tab and toggle off the Move button. Now we have all three Sections set. The Section planes remain active because Enable Sectioning is on, but the Transform tool is no longer active.
These are live three-dimensional views, so we can explore each Section cut interactively. This is one way of using a Viewpoint as a tool. If we want the Section plane to disappear, we can switch to a Viewpoint that doesn’t have Enable Sectioning turned on. Alternatively, to return to a Sectioned view, just select one of the sectioned Viewpoints.
I’ll be covering more advanced Section options in the next video. If you're planning to continue, be sure to save your model using MiddlegateYourName.nwd. I'll see you in the next video. Thank you.