Non-cuttable families - can you turn off the display of masking regions?

[JohnCAVogt]

Specialty Equipment is not cuttable. Therefore, cut a section/elevation through an "L" shaped grab bar, facing away from one of the legs, and it shows up anyway. So I make the family with 3d forms not visible in plan, front, or side, and draw masking regions with the linework of the "away" leg as a new subcategory so that it can be turned off in the facing-away views. (I don't bother with trying to make the cut leg actually appear cut.)

But it seems I can only turn off the linework. This is 90% of the battle, but it would be nice to know how to turn off the masking region, too. Anybody know? Don't bother suggesting making it a Generic Model - that's just not doable in this case, for several reasons.

What it really needs is to be able to set the mask itself to a subcategory. Two other things I already know don't work: 1) Making the category transparent does make the mask transparent, but then other SpecEq in the view is transparent, too, and I might not want that. 2) Setting the mask with a visibility parameter turns off the display in both facing-toward and facing-away views at the same time.

[greg.mcdowell]

I think you're out of luck on this one. Move the section line, hide it in the view (perhaps with a filter) and place detail components, or use a cutable category (something you already said you wouldn't do). Those are the only three ways I can think of to solve the problem.

I would challenge you on the category issue if I could. What's your rational for not using another category. If you place the object on the appropriate sub-category of a cutable category you get nearly the same results as if you placed in the SE category but now it's cutable.

[JohnCAVogt]

I would challenge you on the category issue if I could. What's your rational for not using another category.

We are using a database connection program for equipment that expects it to be in this category. Incidentally, another thing I tried (which Bradley Equipment also tried in making families for their grab bars) was to put the graphics inside generic model family that I nested into the SpecEq family - no good. Still all in elevation.

Anyway, of course, I should have thought of it, but all I have to do is override the graphics in view by element to make it transparent, and that grab bar does not mask anymore.