From the course: AutoCAD MEP Essential Training

Creating a section - AutoCAD MEP Tutorial

From the course: AutoCAD MEP Essential Training

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Creating a section

This part is what makes drafting in 3D, all worth the while. The ability to cut a section, and immediately see the results. For too long, when we want a section of a plan, what did we do? We actually sketched construction lines vertically and horizontally instead of drafting our section. Then when the design changed, we did it all over again. In this video we will open a mechanical drawing then create a section. We'll place the section off to the side of our plan. Then we'll make some modifications, to the plan and refresh the session updating it instantly. So to get started, let's jump into our MEP mechanical drawing. I'm going to come up to this area right here. I'm going to go to my home tab. And what I'm going to do, is I'm going to actually create a vertical section, on my section and elevation tab. Go ahead and click vertical section. Now, it's a two pick process. So what I'm going to do is, I'm going to pick a point, right above here. I'm going to hit F8 to turn my ortho on. I'm going to zoom in, so I don't accidentally snap to something. I'm going to pick that point. It wants another point, so I'm just going to hit enter. Enter the length, 20 foot two and seven eighths. I guess that's good. So let's just hit enter. And there we have it. We have a section. Now, what I'm going to do is actually turn this into something. I'm going to go ahead and select this bounding box and what we can do, is we can actually generate the session. So go ahead and click on generate session, and we going to get the generate session elevation dialogue. We going to create a 2D section elevation, object with hidden line removal. Renews the MEP standard display configuration. Now for our selection set, what we need to do is select objects. So I'm going to go ahead and pick this button right here. I'm going to pick a window around this whole area. And I'm going to hit enter. Now for our placement. We need to place this somewhere in our drive. So I'm going to go new object, and i'm going to use my pick point button, so go ahead and click on pick point. I'm going to zoom out a bit, and I'm just going to put it over here. Let's hit okay. And it's cutting the section. Let's hit escape a couple times. Let's go ahead and zoom in our section. We now have a section through the wall, we can see a damper and now we can see what our duct is doing. I'm going to go back to, this actual area over here. I'm going to select this duct right here, I'm going to select this fitting and this duct. I'm going to take M and hit enter. I'm going to select my duck and I'm going to move it down. I'm going to Shift> right click and go to none. I'm going to put it right about here. I'm going to hit escape a couple times. I'm going to come over to my section, I'm going to select it. I'm going to refresh. And hit escape. Notice that it moved my duct over so my section is live and it's updated. Boy, that makes this so much faster. To be honest it's not the speed that I love, it's the accuracy

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