Trimble Business Center

I am trying to get CAD filter options to appear in Filter manager. I follow the instructions in the help but when I "right click on a category in the advanced filter options"  (the CAD category, which is currently not shown in Filter Manager by default) it will NOT bring up any context menu, and I can't get this category to show. None of the category headings respond to a right click. What am I doing wrong, or is this a bug?

I think Related, I cannot get CAD linework or polygons to show in a cutting plane view, unless they were created in that cutting plane view. No additional filter is applied to cutting plane view. No linework created in any other view will show. Linework created in cutting plane view, shows in other views (except other cutting plane views) 

Is this by design?

Has anyone else experienced this behaviour?

Thanks in advance, Ben

Hey Ben,

In the Advanced View Filter Settings, to hide or show a category in the View Filter you first need to left click on the heading to select it (it will turn yellow) then right click on it again to bring up the context menu.

I've found how unintuitive this is myself and I'll see if it's something we can update the help or the command for.

Regarding the linework in the cutting plane, it will only show up if the line has the same orientation as the cutting plane. So yes most of the time linework drawn in plan or other views will not show up in the cutting plane.

Hope this help,.

Regards,

Adam

Hi Adam, Thank you for your response. I now have CAD listed in the filter manager.

However:

- no lines at all show in any cutting plane except those explicitly created from that cutting plane view.

So for example if I wish to view an elevation plane using a cutting plane through the building face with say 1m thickness;

let us say I have drawn polygons on an identical depth plane from a station view;

the points show up within the cutting plane limit+thickness, but no lines appear, not even those between points that are showing, nor even those that have been created in the 3D view (or using a station view) on the same plane as used to cut. Parts of lines do not show. Lines with vertices entirely within the expected view also do not show.

So I would be grateful if you could clarify what you mean by "orientation" because my expectation, corroborated by your earlier reply, is that a 3D line for example a line between two surveyed points should show in the cutting plane view if it falls entirely within the limit of the plane + offset +- slice thickness, In the same way that the points at each end do. In the same way as a limit box works.

I have tried a line string, a polyline, or a polygon, or lines created from processing feature codes, nothing will show unless it was first created in that specific cutting view.

Things that do show: Individual points, Orthoimages, depth planes with a purple box, total station vector lines or RTK vector lines show (only where they bisect the plane+thickness).

I have filters set to view everything, with nothing turned off

I can find nothing in the help about this.  Do I need to change a setting?  A fresh install has not helped.

I would be grateful for your thoughts.

Thanks in advance

Ben

Hey Ben,

Unfortunately this still sounds like it is as designed at this point in time.

For a line to show up in a cutting plane view, it needs to be created with the exact same orientation as the cutting plane. This means for most cases unless a line was drawn in that cutting plane, it will not be visible (even if a line may be completely encompassed in a cutting plane due to exaggerated depth).

In your example with the building face, lines drawn in the depth plane will not show up even though the orientation from the depth plane and the cutting plane are similar, they need to be exactly the same (i.e. created from the same exact same points/coordinates). Even though the 1m buffer would encompass any points or lines created your depth plane it's the orientation that dictates whether or not they are visible in a cutting plane.

Again unfortunately it doesn't seem like cad work done in the depth plane, transfers over well to the cutting plane in this case.

Hope that helps.

Hi 

I'm bumping up this old chestnut of a post because it seems now more relevant than ever.

I quote Adam because he sums up the problem:

"For a line to show up in a cutting plane view, it needs to be created with the exact same orientation as the cutting plane. This means for most cases unless a line was drawn in that cutting plane, it will not be visible (even if a line may be completely encompassed in a cutting plane due to exaggerated depth)."

Lines/data not showing

Can you explain why it's not desirable to have lines drawn or surveyed, projected and showing in the vertical cutting plane? Since my query in 2017 with V3.90, we've now got subplanes, and other features, but this is not possible?

This is even if I draw a linestring "with the exact same orientation" with the plane of cutting but from a different view.

It doesn't make sense why lines of the same type at the same 3D coordinates drawn using the same command, should not show in the cutting plane just because they were drawn in a different view. Perhaps you can explain the rationale behind this.

To be clear this means you can't aggregate different lines and data along a "cutting plane" for 2D export or for QA checking. You can't see it on the screen.

2D export or projection

I guess that cutting plane is primarily intended for use when converting Laser Scan points to vector lines and features by slicing through the point cloud. However not being able to see or use other entities in the cutting plane, and because you can't export from Dynaviews for this purpose, means you can't use cutting planes to project lines or other data in 2D. As a lot of industry deliverables are still 2D, this doesn't make sense. As far as I know, there's no other way to do this in TBC <please inform!>.

What it says in the help:

At this point it's useful to state what it says in the help about cutting planes. It mentions this exact use case:

"You can use the Cutting Plane View to create CAD line work right on the view (for example, linework tracing features on a building facade) that can be printed as a dynaview in a sheet set and/or exported to other applications via various CAD exporters."

But you can't export a Dynaview or cutting plane 2D view to CAD. So it's necessary to use an external program, to manipulate anything produced on a vertical cutting plane, if you want to produce these 2D deliverables of vertical data. It's necessary to use an external program to "project" all desired data onto a 2D plane  and 3D rotate it, if that's what you have to do. 

Particularly it would be good to have a 3D rotate tool !  I'll make a separate post about that.

In the below link their desired workflow is similar. But they have similar problems. See here:

Issues exporting 2D elevation/vertical data from TBC 

Also here a workflow running into a similar problem

How to dimesion from cutting plane/Sheet view 

This one so far with no engagement toward a fix.

This post outlines how it might be done behind the scenes

Access to Section Plane definitions? 

I also wonder if this might be related to some sort of UCS behind the scenes, See here:

https://community.trimble.com/message/12423-re-editing-lines-with-ucs?commentID=12423#comment-12423 

In which cases, could plane handling and line UCS handling be made more transparent please? For users, not coders!

Supplementary info, for avoidance of doubt:

Expected behaviour: that a vertical cutting plane with cutting plane thickness 1m will show ALL visible features/lines within the 1m of the cutting plane. 

If (for example) if you've drawn three lots of lines in different views, all of which you want to see on the cutting plane, it will show up in elevation and then be able to be exported as a dynaview.

The example is the orange highlighted line in the image. it's drawn between the corners of the rectangle. expected behaviour: it's in the plane so should show on cutting plane view.

Observed behaviour: The only items shown are as follows in the image. No linework or line strings except the rectangles that were directly drawn in the cutting plane window to begin with.  The orange highlighted line which should bisect the top left rectangle, does not show. Neither do the blue and red or green line features.

FYI, If another cutting plane is created, from two similar but different points on the face shown, then none of the rectangles will appear even though the planes are only very slightly different. They must have exactly the same normal angle, in order for the rectangles to show. Even so, as before, the orange highlighted line, and the feature lines, do not show.

Another example showing line draw in progress:

Hoping that some progress is made with this soon, surely it can't  be as designed, for lines on the plane of cutting to disappear like that?