The Section tool upgrade we all want

[peter_94941]

Hey guys!

I think a lot of us have in mind some small, but important tweaks regarding an AC feature that we would love to see in reality.

For me, one of those is about the Section tool. A lot of times, when we put our drawings on the sheets, the width of a section drawing, and the width of the section sign on the floor plan are not equal. For example, we have a floor plan where the end of the section sign is not visible, because it is off the area of the sheet, but when we shorten the section to show it on the floor plan, parts of the section drawing gets cut off. A possible solution is to manually draw both ends of the signs on the floor plan, but this is so silly.

I think a very user-friendly solution would be to treat the width of the section area and the width of the section sign separately, like when you toggle limited horizontal range, and you get a separate line to set the distance you want to show. This method would make this problem manageable in a cool, intuitive way. Hopefully, we can see it in the near future!

(If by chance this is already a feature, please let me know!)

Have a great day!
Peter

Operating system used: Windows

[CosminF]

Hi,

I'd say you could make a wish out of this. This feature can also be implemented on grid lines (to show the naming on the layout even if the view gets cropped).

Currently, a slightly cumbersome workaround would be to place unlinked markers on the floorplans and a linked marker (with the actual section) on a hidden layer. Of course, the drawback would be that the markers wouldn't move as one. 

[Yves]

Hi,

This is indeed something I also needed and that I created using the Graphisoft Section marker.

It allows you to offset the section symbol in the plan without changing the actual length of the "3D" section.

It's an object and its macro in ArchiCAD 23 in French (both objects must be loaded in the libraries).

If you'd like, I can look into doing it using the international version of ArchiCAD.

 

 

[vlahtinen]

One workaround is to hide the original section marker and draw a new one that references the same section. As a result, two different markers refer to one section, but the other is hidden. The hidden one can be used to control the area of the section, and the visible one can be adjusted in plan as needed. This way, the ID at least updates if it is changed. However, this is also a tedious task.

[peter_94941]

Thank you CosminF!

Yes, it would work with the gridline as well, I haven't thought of it since I don't use it that often. I will try the suggested method, seems better than the one I'm used to do.

[peter_94941]

Thank you vlahtinen!

I will definitely try this, at least its still a 3D method and not 2D!

[peter_94941]

Thank you Yves!

This looks very interesting, thank you for sharing this! Since I don't speak French, I would assume an English version of this would help a lot of us! So as I understand it, you created an object that is somehow links to an existing Section and manipulates its floor plan sign? Thats very cool! I think I speak for a lot of us when I say we would love to see something like this in INT version!

[Yves]

Hi,

Here's the English version of the Marker.
The Built-in Section Marker is a GDL object with its macro, which I simply duplicated and modified.
Simply change the Marker type and use it as the default Marker with additional symbol movement options.

 

[peter_94941]

Hey Yves,

Thank you, I'm excited to try this (as soon as I get back from vacation)! I'm wondering where can you find the built-in tools, and how can you modify them? Inside AC or with a different software?

[rakurs]

Fantastic work, Yves! The only drawback is actually what I presume is an ArchiCAD limitation that you cannot have a continuous section line follow the markers when you move them further than they originally should be, or when you move them closer, the line is longer than it should be.