Section View and Split to Use Workplane Coordinates? (or Viewing Direction?)

[Elkniwt]

I find myself wishing that the split operation would start with planes parallel (or perpendicular, if necessary) to the workplane, rather than the global coordinate system. I find it much easier to place the workplane in the desired orientation than to try to fiddle with the orientation sliders. Or maybe a way to "cruise" the plane over any object (not just the selected object).

Additionally (or maybe alternatively), I often want to pop up the section view plane perpendicular to my viewing direction. I'm trying to work on a portion, and various parts of the current design get in my way for selecting or placing an object. Maybe even a dedicated modifier key for when I'm placing or selecting objects, so that I could, say, hold down ctrl and spin the mouse wheel to adjust sectioning into a design in the direction that I'm looking so that I can get to a buried object. Maybe that's too busy/fiddly?

[henmedia]

@Elkniwt good ideas, I built both. They come with the next release.

Section view: the panel now has a new row, "Axes from": Design, Workplane and View.

• Workplane: X, Y and Z are the workplane's own axes. Z cuts parallel to the workplane, X and Y square to it. Put the workplane on a sloped face with W and you cut parallel to that face. When you move the workplane, the cut moves with it.
• View: the cut faces the screen and takes away what lies in front of it. With the slider you push it deeper along your line of sight, so you can get to a buried object and click it. After turning the view, click View again and the cut follows the new view.

Split: the plane now starts parallel to the workplane (on the base plate that is level, as before). There is also a new row "Align to workplane" with Parallel, Across X and Across Y. If the workplane's origin lies inside the parts, the plane goes right through it, so you can lay the workplane on a face and split exactly there, without the sliders.

I left out the Ctrl + mouse wheel idea, because the wheel already zooms and it would get fiddly. The View cut with its slider does the same job.

[henmedia]

@Elkniwt "Axes from" (Design, Workplane, View) in the section view and the workplane buttons in the split are out now in 1.94.0. https://github.com/henmedia/layerling/releases/tag/v1.94.0

[Elkniwt]

Excellent! Thank you so much.