The plan view
Looking straight down, and cutting through.
/plan, or I to
toggle between plan and isometric.
Looking straight down
PLAN is the view that prints like a drawing: no perspective, no foreshortening, and a scale that means something. Drawing is easier here too - what you click is where it lands, with no plane to think about.
Cutting through
A plan is a slice, not a view from above. Set a cut height and only what lies inside it is drawn - so a wall shows as two lines and the roof over it does not.
/cut 0 9'- sets the bottom and the top of the slice./cut all- opens it right up to the whole model./cut off- turns the slice off.- Ctrl+wheel over the drawing travels up and down through the model, carrying the slice with it. Easier than typing heights, because you can watch it.
- Right-click a floor and choose Plan From Here - one click instead of two numbers.
What you get
Anything below the slice is drawn faintly and dashed, the way a drawing shows a beam over a door or a footing under a wall. Anything above it is not drawn at all.
Printing it
PLAN is the view to print from, and to export SVG from - see printing.
Traveling up through it
The two numbers in the CUT boxes are the bottom and the top of the slice, and they are always on screen. When something is being left out the bar says so - "1,584 things outside it" - so a drawing that has gone quiet is never a mystery.
Drawing inside the slice
The bottom of the slice is also the height you draw at, which is what a floor plan means: set the bottom to 9'-0" and you are drawing on the second story, seeing the second story, with everything below out of the way.
Snapping obeys the slice as well. What is hidden cannot be snapped to - otherwise the cursor pulls onto things you cannot see, which is worse than no slice at all.
See also
- Printing - plan is the view to print
- Planes - which way is up, and drawing on a face
- The view cube - getting back to plan from anywhere