Exploring Advanced Section Tools in Navisworks: A Step-by-Step Guide

Welcome back to the Navisworks video series. In this video I'll be covering advanced section tools and we'll be using the MetagateYourName.nwd file that we saved in a previous video. It should look a lot like the one that I have on screen.

Open the Lesson 1 MetagateYourName.nwd file to the view where you last left off. In my case, I saved this file while looking at Section 1, so it's going to open when I'm looking at Section 1. Last time we covered how to make a single section plane and how to save that in a viewpoint. We did that three times with three different section planes.

This time we're going to look at how you can use multiple planes at once. Let's start out with Section 3. Let's make a copy of this section. Now we have a new viewpoint called Section 3-1.

Let's rename this to Section A. Now you'll notice that Navisworks creates a copy of whatever viewpoint you want to add a copy of above the previous copy. You can select this viewpoint and move it down to the bottom of your list if you'd like to separate it from where it existed originally. Section A took all of the properties of Section 3, which means that the section tools are enabled, but you should note that all of the planes within each of the different viewpoints are independent of each other.

So Section 3 has a Plane 1, Section 2 has a Plane 1, and Section 1 has a Plane 1. Each of these Plane 1s are not the same plane. It's viewpoint Section 1, Plane 1; viewpoint Section 2, Plane 1; and now we'll be using viewpoint Section A, Plane 1, and we'll be adding a Plane 2. Let's turn on the transform move just so we can see our section plane, and let's turn on Plane 2. Still, Plane 1 is currently the current plane, but let's change that current plane to Plane 2. Let's make sure that the alignment is set to Bottom, and then grab the gizmo, actually the Z-axis of the gizmo, and move it down. You'll see your model come into existence.

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So what's happening is that Plane 1, I'm selecting it right now, is still in the place that we left it, and that's cutting everything from where it exists up. But Plane 2 is cutting everything where it exists and down, and this allows us to get a little sliver of the building to look at. I'd like you to set your Plane 2 just below the third floor and make sure that Plane 1 is still set to where it was.

Currently these planes are independent of each other. I can move Plane 1 and Plane 2 and it won't affect one or the other, but if we want to always have this sliver no matter where we drag Plane 1 or Plane 2, then we can link these two together. We do that by selecting this link section planes.

Just like every other button that is a toggle, it turns blue whenever it's turned on. And then we can either have Plane 2 or Plane 1 as current, and drag this up or down, and we'll see that the alternate section plane will follow. Let's go a little further and create a vertical section plane.

So first we have to turn on a new section plane by selecting the light bulb, and then we'd like to make that plane current, and then we can drag this plane to wherever we want to see it. If you don't like the orientation of your plane, you can change that to either the, let's say in this case, Back, or we can actually select a plane. If we go to align to surface, I'm going to select this window plane to align to it.

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This works best if you have an odd plane like this sign, but for the most part, if your building is orthogonal, then you'll want to use the ViewCube directions. Now because link section planes is already turned on, if I were to use the vertical axis in the gizmo, then you'll see that my section planes all move with my current Plane 3. So you can use the gizmo to move this plane around, and you can also make a number of other planes like a box. I'm aligning this one to Front, and then we'll always have the same sliver of information in three dimensions.

If you'd like to go back and independently change any of these sections, just toggle off the link section planes, and then change your current plane to whichever one you want to edit, and then you can move that plane. To put them back to where they are linked, just select the link section planes again, and you'll have control over all of them at the same time once more. If you don't want to go through all the trouble of setting up a number of custom planes for yourself, you can simply go to box mode, and this box acts as six planes all together.

They're preset, and you can move this box around and create whatever view that you need to. The plane option is much more customizable. And that covers the advanced section tools.

In future videos we'll be visiting these tools, and we'll also be animating them. So I hope you enjoy working with them, and I'll see you in the next video. Thank you.

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