Drawings and output

Sections and Elevations: Cutting, Viewing and Editing the Building from the Side

Draw section lines, open the four outside elevations and each room's interior elevations, add detail callouts and levels, and select, move, place and annotate in a side view.

The views

**Elevations**: the four outside elevations, north, east, south and west, are there from the first wall. Open them from the Views tab or the Views button.

**Section** (`SECTION`, `SE`): drag a line across the plan. The half on your left as you walk along it is the half you see, and it opens as soon as you finish.

**Interior elevations** (`ELEVATION`, `ELE`): click inside a room. Four arrows appear, one per wall, and each opens that wall as an interior elevation.

**Detail** (`DETAIL`, `DET`): click where the detail is. A circle marks it, and its drawing, at 1:5 through the wall it stands on, is in the Views list.

**Level** (`LEVEL`, `LV`): in a side view, click at a height to add a storey whose floor is there.

What a side view shows

Everything in the model: walls cut or seen, floors and roofs, doors and windows with their tags, stairs, furniture, services and the ground line, each drawn the way a section or an elevation draws it.

Levels are marked down the side, with each storey's name and height above the datum. Settings › Editor › **Pieces drawn as** set to Real item shows furniture as pictures of the real piece.

Its properties give its **Scale** and the **Storeys** it draws.

Working in a side view

**Select**: click a thing to select it; drag a box to select several. The properties open as they do on the plan.

**Move**: drag a thing along the view or up and down: a window's sill, a wall's base, a beam's drop, a run's levels. A readout shows how far, and a typed figure moves it exactly.

**Points and heights**: drag a wall's corner, a roof's ridge or eave, a window's corner or a piece's corner to change its size from the side.

**Place**: walls, doors, windows, levels and the services trades' runs and fittings can be placed in a side view, on the cut or on a wall face (the work plane).

**Annotate**: dimensions, text, leaders, lines and hatches drawn in a side view belong to that view.

**Pan and zoom**: the wheel or a pinch zooms; the middle button, two fingers or Space and drag pans.

Leaving and exporting

Press **Escape** with nothing in hand, or the view chip, to go back to the plan.

While a side view is open, Settings › Exports has **Side view sheet (PDF)** for it.

Each side view also gets a sheet in the default sheet set. See [Sheets and schedules](/docs/sheets-and-schedules).

Frequently asked questions

Which way does a section look?

To the left of the way you drew the line. Draw it the other way round to look the other way.

Can I edit the building in an elevation?

Yes. You can select, move and place walls, doors, windows, levels and services in a side view, and the plan and the model follow.