3D Section of 2D polylines

Over the past year I have been working on quickly generating vertical cross sections through 2D lines. I have exhausted all of my connections with fellow AutoCAD users and I still haven't found an efficient solution. I appreciate any help or advice you could offer.

The material I'm working with is a bunch of polylines that kind of resemble branching tree roots from dozens of trees. The polylines sprout from seed points and then branch and cross each other as they move down. I need to generate many vertical sections through the lines. Since the material is composed of lines a slice along a plane would only generate points. I need to take a slice of a volume of lines so that the paths are preserved.

I have tried creating two vertical parallel planes and then using the slice tool on each plane. This would break up all of the polylines at the intersection with the planes so I can manually delete all segments that are not between the planes. This is time consuming, and also leaves room for error when manually deleting line segments.

The ideal tool for efficiency and accuracy would be Section Line. I could create a section line, convert it to a volume, and generate a 3D section with the option to save the section to a new file. The problem with this is that the section tool only works on solid 3D objects. I have considered sweeping a small diameter circle along each polyline to give them volume, but this would take days to weeks of work.

Is there a better tool or method for creating 3D sections of a volume of polylines? Are there any tricks that can be used to allow the 3D section tool to work with the polylines? Maybe I could convert them to a different type of object.

It is a little difficult to explain the problem with viewing it in 3D, so I hope my description is sufficient. I am using AutoCAD 2013. Thanks for any help or advice!

Welcome to the forum.

I doubt very much that you will find a better solution than the one which you suggested, being a very small circle, think subatomic, swept along your lines.

Compared to the year which you have invested (in vain) trying to make the software do something it is not designed to do,

the couple days of implementing a solution which will work and provide you a viable technique going forward, seems annoying,

but a small price to pay.

How many more years might it take, to convince you that your technique is flawed?

Shortcuts save us time getting from

where we are, to where we want to be.

Solutions solve problems.

Good luck sweeping those circles.

You do not need to align or orient the circles using the SWEEP command, so that will save you a lot of time.

Since the material is composed of lines a slice along a plane would only generate points. I need to take a slice of a volume of lines so that the paths are preserved.

I am confused - what material on this earth is composed of lines? How can a line have volume? The location where a line pierces a plane is by definition a point.

I can't help but think you are leaving out some important information.

...It is a little difficult to explain the problem with viewing it in 3D...

If the lines are actually at different elevations, they go up and down or are at level not zero then its super easy to make a section, pick 2 pts sort entities into crossing order the just use INTERS or intersectlinewith to work out the new 3d point. I know I have done this for house plans to show in elevation the sloping walls.