Section Perspectives

Another semester of Revit instruction comes to a close.  I'll share some of the best student work soon.  In one of the later classes we cover presentation techniques and one topic covered are section perspectives.  I'll illustrate the steps for creating one of these and share some tips to make setup easier.

Step 1 - Create a new camera view.  Once I have my desired angle I'll tile(WT) this view with a plan view and zoom both (ZA).

Step 2 - Next click in the perspective window to activate it and enable the section box in the Properties Palette where the view properties should display by default.

At this point you will see the section box enabled in the view.  If the camera is close to the model or the perspective is an interior shot parts of the section box may be outside the view frustum (field of vision defined by the camera).

This is not a problem when you have a plan view tiled.  By selecting the section box it will display in the plan view and when you activate the plan view you will get the controls to adjust it.

 

Step 3 - Next adjust the extents of the section box.  Activate the plan view with the section box selected and adjust the extent controls.

 
At this point all of the faces of the section box may be visible in the perspective view so you can make future adjustments there.  The trick in the beginning though is to use two views.

Selecting something in one view will select it everywhere.  Try selecting a window in the model while you have a window schedule tiled.   For system elements like cameras and section boxes selection will enable their display in all other visible views.

Below I show how you can also display the camera in the plan view by selecting the crop boundary in the perspective view. This can be used to reposition the camera but be careful to not move the camera so it looks away from the section boxed model!

 _erik

Addendum.  Scott Davis gave me another solution you can try.

I like to use the “steering wheel rewind technique” First, set up a camera where you want and open the perspective.  Next, turn on the section box in the perspective view.  Then use the view cube, and click on a corner of the cube to align the view orthogonally.  (yes, your perspective will be gone…temporarily)  Next, adjust your section box to clip off the portions you want to remove. Use the view cube to move around the model to help in placement/adjustment of the section box.  Finally, use the "Rewind" tool on the Steering Wheel to rewind back to the perspective view.  Viola!  The view resets, but the section box remains where you adjusted it to.  Just another way to do it!

Thanks Scott!