Interactive slice basics

Interactive slice is used to temporarily suppress part of a scene's display to reveal hidden content. It can be applied to any content in the scene, making it possible to see inside buildings, explore stacked volumes, and push through subsurface geology.

The slicing shape can be either a plane or a volumetric shape. Planes act like walls that can be positioned in the view, rotated, and expanded. By default, planes will hide the content in the direction toward the camera, but they can also be locked to either the forward or backward direction only. Volumetric shapes—boxes, cylinders, and spheres—can also be used to define spaces where content is suppressed. By default, volumetric shapes hide content from the inside, but they can be configured to hide content outside instead. You can use multiple slicing objects in a single scene to achieve more advanced displays.

The displays created using slices are temporary, not saved with the project, and not included in map packages. You can, however, export their definitions as point feature classes for further use.

Create an interactive slice

On the Analysis tab, in the Workflows group, in the Exploratory 3D Analysis gallery, click Slice Slice. When you save templates with custom configurations, they are added to the gallery.

Creation methods

The five methods for creating an interactive slice are described in the following table:

MethodDescription

Interactive Plane Interactive Plane

Click in the view to place one side of the slicing plane. Click again to set the orientation and width. This is the default method.

Plane From Feature Use Feature

Click a feature in the view to create an oriented slice based on its extent.

Plane From Camera Use Camera

Create a slice using the current camera's viewpoint.

Interactive Volume Volume

Click in the view to position the anchor point of the slicing volume. Click again to set the orientation and size.

From Layer From Layer

Automatically generate slicing planes and volumes based on a point layer where feature attributes populate parameters such as angle and width. Previously exported slice objects can be revisited using this method.

Update an interactive slice object

To update the location of an existing slice object, it must be selected. Click the control point with the Slice tool to select it and use the interactive handles to adjust the location and position. You can move the objects in the x- and y-space, drag the green arrow to move in the z-space, or reposition the blue spheres to adjust the overall size of the slice. Layers that are either hidden or revealed in the view dynamically update as changes are made.

Interactive handles to update slice plane

If you prefer to manually type values, you can update specific properties for a selected slice object on the Properties tab in the Exploratory Analysis pane. In the pane, browse to each slice object by clicking Select Next Select Next and Select Previous Select Previous to make one slice active at a time and apply iterative updates.

Delete an interactive slice object

Select a slice object with the Slice tool and click Delete Delete on the Properties tab. You can also delete a slice object by pressing the Delete key, using the object's right-click context menu, or clicking Delete Slice from the on-screen edit overlay for the selected slice object. Multiple slice objects can be deleted at once by clicking Clear All Clear All in the Exploratory 3D Analysis drop-down list in the Workflows group on the Analysis tab.