Section Review

A plan can be wrong for years without anybody noticing. A section cannot, because it is the one drawing where the floor-to-floor, the structure, the services, the ceiling and the envelope all have to occupy the same vertical line and add up.

Which is exactly why sections get cut through the corridor rather than through the place where they would not.

Workflow

Step 1. Find out where the cut is, and where it is not

Ask, in one message:

1. Where is this section cut, on the plan? Is there a section marker?
2. Whose drawing, at what revision, at what scale?
3. What phase: sketch, developed, wall section, construction?
4. Is this the only section, or one of several?
5. Is the floor-to-floor stated anywhere?

Then ask where it is not cut. A single section through a building shows one line, and the conflicts are almost always somewhere else: at the deepest beam, at the corridor where the main duct crosses, at the stair, at the level change, where the plate steps.

Name the places that ought to have a section and do not. That list is usually the most useful thing this produces.

Step 2. Check that the vertical dimensions close

The one arithmetic a section has to survive:

floor to floor
  - structure depth at this line
  - services below it
  - ceiling void and the ceiling itself
  - floor build-up above
= clear height

Run it with whatever is on the drawing, and report each term as dimensioned, scaled, or not shown. Point at design-ceiling, which does this properly with values from the engineers.

Say plainly when the terms do not add up, and say which term is missing rather than which is wrong. Most sections do not close because something was never in them, not because a number is incorrect.

Step 3. Find what has been drawn around

The heart of it. Sections resolve things or avoid them, and both look like drawing:

• Poché with nothing in it. A solid black or hatched zone standing in for a build-up nobody has decided.
• "Typical" or "similar". Which condition is it typical of, and is this one of them?
• A break line. What is behind it, and was it broken because it repeats or because it changes?
• A cut that stops. A section that ends at a wall rather than continuing to the ground or the sky.
• Services shown as a rectangle. A duct symbol with no size is a hope.
• Ground drawn flat where the site slopes. Point at civil-drawing-review.
• A ceiling drawn as one line where there is a plenum full of things.

Report each with what it is standing in for and who resolves it.

Step 4. Check the places a section is for

The conditions a section exists to settle, and whether this one settles them:

• Every threshold and level change, inside and out.
• Where the roof meets the wall, and where the wall meets the ground. Point at design-parapet and design-below-grade-assembly.
• Head and sill of every opening in the cut.
• Where the structure lands and what it lands on.
• Stairs and any change in floor level.
• Where the ceiling changes height.
• What is above the highest point and below the lowest.

Anything in that list absent from the section is not necessarily wrong; it is another section.

Step 5. Report

• Where it is cut, and the sections that are missing.
• Whether the vertical dimensions close, with the missing terms named.
• Everything drawn around: poché, typical, break lines, symbol services.
• Which of the conditions a section settles are settled here.
• What was read at scale rather than dimensioned.
• What could not be read.

Then name the next: design-ceiling for the plenum arithmetic, assembly-review for the build-up, plan-review for the plan it was cut from.

Step 6. Save, if asked

Ask whether to write the reading to a file and where.

Rules

• Ask where it is cut, and name the places that are not cut.
• Run the vertical arithmetic, and mark every term dimensioned, scaled, or not shown.
• Say which term is missing rather than which is wrong.
• Report poché, "typical", break lines and symbol services as things drawn around.
• Never measure something the scale cannot support.
• Judge a sketch section as a sketch section.

Anti-patterns

• Reading the section and never asking where it was cut from.
• Accepting poché as a build-up.
• Treating "typical" as an answer.
• Assuming a duct symbol has a size behind it.
• Reporting a section as fine because it draws well.
• Missing that the one place needing a section has none.
• Scaling a dimension off a sketch.

Resources

None. This skill is one file. Output is written directly at the path you choose.