Sections are used to illustrate material and other properties of model details. In this tutorial, you will use the Section Styles property of objects and layers to use when viewing a section through your model.

1. Open the Model

Download and open the SectionStyles.3dm model of a building foundation. The geometry is organized in layers. There is one clipping plane that cuts through the model, and is active in the perspective view through the model.

2. Section Styles: Layers

When create a new object, the Section Style property is set to be by layer. In other words, these object inherit their Section Style from the layer they are placed in. Here are the steps to set a custom Section Style for a layer.

• In the SectionStyles.3dm model, locate the Wall layer and under SectionStyle property, click on None.
• The Section Style dialog opens with the default options that you can customize to match your wall specifications. In this example, s set the Hatch Pattern to Hatch1, Rotation to 45 degrees, Scale to 5, and Background to None, then click OK/Apply. All objects in the Wall layer (with Section Style set to By Layer) will now use the Wall layer style.

2. Section Styles: Objects

You can set a custom Section Style for each object. This is useful when you have a number of objects in one layer, and you need to assign different Section Styles to each one of them. In the example, the Foundation layer has four objects. Here is how you set the Section Style for the earth geometry:

• Select the bottom object located in the Earth layer. go to the Properties panel and under SectionStyle expand the list and click on Custom. This will open the Section Style dialog. Set Hatch Pattern to Earth, set Rotation to 45 degrees, set Scale to 2, then click OK/Apply.
• Follow similar steps to set or modify the Section Style for each one of the objects in the Foundation layer.

3. View 3D Sections

Once you set the Section Styles for layers and objects, you can now view your section in 3D modeling space using clipping planes. Here are the steps to create and activate a clipping planes:

• Use the ClippingPlane command to create additional clipping plane.
• Select the clipping plane object, then go to Properties panel to set properties such as Name, Depth and Label.
• You can activate a clipping plane in any viewport to view your sections. To do that, select the clipping plane, go to the Properties panel, and under Views Clipped, you can check the box of the view to clip.
• To update the location of the section, select your clipping plane, and drag or rotate.

4. View in 2D Layout

You can view your section in 2D layout.
[TODO: Link to the Clipped Views Page]

5. Extract Vector Drawing

You can extract vector drawings of your section to use for drafting. The drawing is created in the model XY-Plane, and you can reference from the Top view in a detail in layout.
[TODO: Link to the Vector Drawings Page]

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Beginners