If you’d like to be able to isolate a section cut in your model, download my free section template, and play around with the scenes to see the effect! It’s all done with a simple style, and setting the layer color opacity to zero.
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Click the button to download the file.
It’s entirely possible to isolate a section fill using entirely native SketchUp. No extensions or special tricks required!
Isolating a section fill will enable you to show a slice of your model while hiding the rest of your model. This is great for stacking viewports in LayOut! Watch the video or continue below.
How to isolate a section fill
To isolate a section fill, you need to create a style that hides edges and profiles, but colors faces using Color by Layer. The trick is to set all your layer colors to 0% opacity. This will allow you to have regular materials applied to the faces in your model, but have an alternative transparent material applied when you want to isolate the section fill.
To configure a style, go to Window > Default Tray > Styles > Edit tab > Edges, and turn off Edges and Profiles.
Then, go to the Modeling section and turn on Color by Layer.
Don’t forget to save your new material. Learn all about saving materials to your computer in my in-depth tutorial on Collections.
Finally, you’ll need to go to Window > Default Tray > Layers, and click on each layer color swatch, and drag the opacity slide down to zero. (I know this is sort of a pain, and kind of tedious, but if you use templates to start your models, you could do this to your template model so you only have to do it once.)
With your new style saved, and all your layer colors set to transparent, you can start modeling and adding section planes to your model. Whenever you want to isolate the section, just activate that style! Feel free to move the section or make changes to your model, the isolated section will always slice the live model.
