Unsection Parts in 2D Section Views (Alibre Design Tips)

Create section views and manage them with drawing explorer.

Editor's Note: This tutorial courtesy of Alibre.

In Alibre Design, you can create 2D section views that require several of the parts be represented in an unsectioned fashion. Bolts, rods, spindles, shafts, and other similar items frequently require this representation within a section view.

Create a Section View
You can create any section view you'd like by first creating a figure, such as a line, and then using the Section View tool on it.

First, create a figure in Alibre Design.

Unsection Specific Parts
In our example, we want the central part to be represented in an unsectioned fashion. We can do this in a single step. Right click on any edge of the part. Note that you must click on an edge of the part -- clicking on the sectioned area will not offer the menu choice you are after. From the menu, select Do Not Section.

Right click on any edge of the part. Select Do Not Section.

After selecting this option, the part, whose edge you clicked on, becomes unsectioned.

The unsectioned part.

You can use the same process to resection the part.

Managing the Section View
Using the Drawing Explorer, on the left side of the window, you can see which parts are sectioned and which are not. This is helpful with very complex section views that contain many parts. You can right click directly on items in the Drawing Explorer under any Section View node, to section or unsection them as well. In the example below, we can see that there are two sectioned parts, representing the top and bottom half of the enclosure. The part with the unsectioned icon represented the central shaft.

Drawing Explorer shows sectioned and unsectioned parts.

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