Explore the process of setting up building sections in a construction model, which provides a more comprehensive view of the entire structure. Discover how to add sections, adjust views, and identify gaps in the model, ultimately preparing it for documentation.
Key Insights
- The article walks through the process of adding and setting up building sections in a structural model, emphasizing the importance of spending more time working in views not on sheets unless doing direct documentation.
- Specific techniques explained include identifying the right spot to add sections that provide the most information, using the section tool, and adjusting the scope box and far clip. These techniques contribute to a more well-informed and comprehensive view of the building model.
- The author stresses the importance of examining the model in section views to easily identify and address missing elements or gaps in the model, such as thickened slab edges or missing ceilings, before moving on to documentation.
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Now that we have our building elevations ready to go, we're going to go ahead and set up a couple of our building sections. We've got this one that we created already, and this will help inform any other model changes that we need to make, and will also give us a better view of the entire building altogether. So I'm going to go ahead and jump to my level one view here, and you may have noticed that I do go back to this one a lot more than I do, say, the ones that are on the sheets.
And that's because I'm trying to form the habit so that we spend more time working in these views that aren't actually on sheets, and less time working in the ones that are, unless we're doing direct documentation. And in this case, all we're doing is adding new views to the sheet. So it's good to use the working views when we're not doing that direct documentation type, which you'll see here in a little bit.
So to add the sections, what I want to do is pick a good spot. So here, when we draw a section through here, it cuts through this full-height curtain wall, through the elevators, through the lobby, and the skylight, and those kinds of things. If we were to look at it, we could see it's a pretty well-informed section that gives us a lot of information.
So I want to be able to do the same thing with the other ones that I create. If I go back to my level one view, drawing another one that goes through this same area is pretty good as well, because I'll be able to see how level two and level one interact on this side and on the other side. So I'm going to go to my section tool here, and I'll click to start it, and then just move it across.
And this is just like any of the other ones that we use. If you're having a hard time keeping it level like I am here, just hold down your Shift key, and that should take care of it for you. So I'm going to bring it pretty close to where my scope box is here, and then I don't want it to show that far across, so what I'll do is I'll bring it in to about halfway here, and then let's take a look at it.
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Now, the section boxes are not necessarily immune to the scope box here either. So you probably saw on this one that we are tied to the scope box as well when it was initially created, and so we can use that as a basis for our building, or we don't have to if we don't want to. So I can go in and I can do the same operation where I assign my scope box to the view, and you can see it pops out.
Also, I want you to notice that we have the earth fill from our topo surface showing up on here, because we added that, and it just helps us to fill in some of the gaps on our drawings. If I were to go back to my other section, just going from my project browser, you can see here we have sections and building section. I can do the same thing and go ahead and make sure this one is set to the same scope box, and a couple of things that setting it to the scope box is going to do to us.
It's going to set our far clip to view all the way to the back where the scope box is, so that was probably the biggest change that we noticed with that setting. And so in our case, I don't think that's really what we want to do, so we could use it as just a basis for starting the setup for our section, and then I can adjust this far clip to something like 15 feet, because I really don't need to see that far back. Now what we want to do is we want to identify some of the holes in our model here, and this is really easy to do once you start looking at things in section.
So typically, I would have a thickened slab edge here. I would most certainly have a ceiling element at the exterior at this point, and then my elevator would not just dive into the ground like that. We would have some type of wall around it and a pit slab at the bottom there.
Same thing with the thickened edge at the slab here, and we're missing the ceiling at this point. We're going to go ahead and fill in all of those gaps in our model, and then we can go ahead with the process of putting our section views on a sheet so that we can get ready for the next step, which would eventually be documentation.
