Modeling
About Archicad's design tools, element connections, modeling concepts, etc.

Horizontal section through mesh

Anonymous
Not applicable
I am designing a building attached to a hill.
Therefore I made a mesh of the terrain and placed my building on it.
To see the connection of the building and the terrain I would like to make a horizontal section (floorplan) through the mesh.

However: if I look at the plans, they don't cut through the mesh as they are supposed to do at that particular height. But in section and elevation it does.

How can I resolve this?
4 REPLIES 4
Karl Ottenstein
Moderator
Meshes do not respond to the Floor Plan Cut Plane (FPCP) - they only display themselves 'symbollically'.

But, everything responds to the 3D Cutting Planes - so you can create appropriate cutting planes, turn on '3D Cutaway', and take a top-down view in the 3D window and create a 3D Document (12 and above) or copy/paste to a Worksheet (11 and below).

Another method - but not one I would recommend for a high polygon mesh - is to use the mesh-to-roof goodie (download from Help > Goodies) and use the cutplane with the generated roof surfaces. Roofs will respond to the FPCP.

Cheers,
Karl
One of the forum moderators
AC 28 USA and earlier   •   macOS Sequoia 15.2, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB
canvea
Booster
I would also really like to do this, and it would be great to have it simply connected to the FPCP. I assume nothing has changed in the last 13 years..
AC24 Norway • Fujitsu • Intel(R) Xeon(R) W-2123 CPU @ 3.60GHz • 32GB ram • Windows 10 Pro • NVIDIA Quadro P4000
Hmooslechner
Moderator
Another workaround: Make a copy fo the mesh - rightklick it to a Morph and then you can cut it manually or use the possibility of the morh-body itself to react to the floorplan-cutting-section.

Then, it would be possible to make an library-Part of it and use the project2{3} intelligent to get this cutplane-View. Should i make a Vid how to do this?
AC5.5-AC27EduAut, PC-Win10, MacbookAirM1, MacbookM1Max, Win-I7+Nvidia
Jeff Galbraith
Advocate
Another option would be to create a large morph mass for the site and then use the mesh you made as an SEO cutting plane.

Step 1. Create a large morph box that extends the full width, length and height of your mesh.

Step 2. Change the settings of your mesh to be just the mesh plane...don't choose the option that gives it thickness / solidity below. in other words it should just be a face, not a solid.

Step 3. Place the mesh on a hidden layer that is not visible in your regular presentation views.

Step 4. Create an SEO with the morph as the target and the mesh set as the operator, with settings set to "subtraction with upward extrusion'. Then execute the SEO.

Because SEO's remain 'live' you can modify the mesh any time you want and the morph will automatically update.
Jeff G

Archicad 27 USA (full), Macbook Pro (16-inch 2023, M3 MAX, 128 GB RAM)