urbium Studio docs
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Modeling

Sections and sun study

Cut the 3D view with a box or a plane, and see the sun and its shadows on any day and hour at the lot's location.

Cut the 3D view

Choose View › Section:

Key Command Cuts
⌥B Section Box to Selection Everything outside a box around the selection, and zooms to it.
⌥K Cut at Storey Everything 1.2 m (3′-11¼″) above the storey's floor, the plan's cut height, so the 3D view matches the plan sheet.
⌥J Cutaway The eighth of the model nearest the camera, for a presentation view.
⌥X Clear Section Nothing: brings it all back.

A box and a plane can cut at once. Cut faces are filled in a darker shade of their class colour.

Adjust a cut

While the view is cut, a chip at its top right names the cut and holds Offset and Clear.

  1. Drag the square on a face of the box, or the dot on the plane, to move it along its normal.
  2. Or type a length in Offset to move the handle you dragged last.

A click goes through what is cut away to what the cut shows. The cut is kept with the model's view, across edits, and is drawn in 3D only.

Clip
Section Box to Selection on a room; a face handle dragged; Offset typed; Clear Section

Note. For a section drawn on a sheet, use the Section tool. See Sections and interior elevations.

Study the sun

A project made on a looked-up lot, and the sample, know their location. Choose View › Sun Study (⌥U). A panel opens at the view's bottom right:

  1. Turn on Sun and shadows.
  2. Set the Date (the arrows step a day), or click Jun 21, Mar 20 or Dec 21.
  3. Drag Time from sunrise to sunset, or click Play at the Step you choose (5, 15, 30 or 60 minutes).

The panel reads out the local time, the sun's azimuth and its altitude. Shadows fall on the ground past the lot, onto the neighbours' land too.

In plan, the panel also offers Plan shadows at 9:00, 12:00, 15:00, each in its own tint, for a site plan discussion.

Clip
the Sun Study panel on the sample: Dec 21, time dragged through the afternoon, shadows moving across the lot

Limit. A model with no location says "No location for this model" and has no sun study. Shadows are informational: no rule check reads them, and sheets never draw them.

Get a sun study animation

An agent on the control port can write a sun study of the current view, between two times on a date, as an animated GIF or a folder of PNG frames, drawn in the Materials style.