Learn/Drafting/Solid Modeling Tools
Slice
At a glance
- Cut any body in two with a flat face, a construction plane, or an origin plane
- Keep both halves — each becomes its own independent, fully editable body
- Keep one side: a parametric step you can reopen, with Flip Side to choose the half
- Slice by a face and the cut follows that face through edits
- Section: draw the body's exact cross-section into a new sketch
- Section sketches feed dimensioning, extrudes, and Send To… CAM directly
Slice cuts a solid body with a plane. Pick the body, pick the cutting plane, choose what you want out of it: two bodies, one trimmed body, or a cross-section sketch. Split an oversized part to fit the table, make fixturing halves, break a weldment into sub-assemblies, or lift an internal profile straight into a sketch.
Picking the cutting plane
After clicking the body, click any of:
- A flat face on a part. The cut lands exactly on that face's plane — and it stays attached: change the part and the slice follows the face. (Behind the scenes this creates a face-attached construction plane, the same kind Sketch makes when you sketch on a face.)
- A construction plane you've placed with the Plane tool.
- An origin plane (Top / Front / Right) — they're surfaced automatically while you're picking and tucked away again afterwards.
Choose the result
Keep both halves (the default). The body splits at the plane into two independent bodies — hide one, move one, keep modeling on the other. Each half carries a full, editable copy of the part's history, so both remain real parametric parts.
Keep one side. The body is trimmed to one side of the plane as a single step in its history. Flip Side switches which half survives, and the live preview always shows what you're keeping. Reopen the step from the history any time to flip it or re-pick the plane.
Section (sketch). Nothing is cut — instead the body's exact cross-section at the plane is drawn into a new sketch on that plane: lines, arcs, and circles you can dimension, extrude, or send straight to Plasma, Laser, or Router with Send To…. Perfect for checking an internal profile or cutting a gasket from a solid model.
It speaks up
A plane that misses the body, or a cut that would remove everything, says so plainly right in the dialog — flip the side or re-pick the plane — instead of silently doing nothing.