How do I isolate a few floors in the Structure 3D view?

Not version-specific

Tekla Structural Designer

Environment

Not environment-specific

Question

I have a large model and I want to isolate a few floors to make modelling easier, is this possible?

Answer

Cutting Planes can be used to isolate a portion of the model. Six planes are available in the shape of a cube, each plane can be activated and then moved to hide what is outside the plane making it easier to work on the inside of the model.

The option is available via the Edit ribbon tab > Cutting Planes command.

Selecting a plane

Once this command is activated, click on the plane you wish to move to select it. Once selected, the plane will be highlighted and an arrow will appear pointing to the positive side of the plane. The positive side is what will be hidden.

Note: When a cutting plane is active the icon shown in the bottom right of the screenshot below will appear.

Moving a plane

To move a cutting plane, left click on the arrow of the plane. You can then move the plane by moving the plane in the direction of the arrow. If you know the distance you wish to move the plane you can use the method of pressing <F2> and specifying the distance.

Left click (or press Enter if you used the <F2> method) to apply the cutting plane. Press the Esc key to exit the command to continue modelling.

Restoring a cutting plane to show the hidden part of the model

To restore the cutting plane use the Edit ribbon tab > Cutting Planes command again. Click on the hidden plane to reshow the hidden part of the model.

Note: The icon in the corner has now disappeared indicating the cutting planes are no longer active.