Does anyone have an idea on how to create cross sections without cutting up the model similar to applications like Autodesk Inventor? Maybe inserting a poly plane into the object and tell Maya to only render stuff in the normal direction of the plane if that is even possible?

the problem will be that Maya is a surface modeler, not a solid modeler - so if you cut into a cross section it won’t be solid.

Anyway - if you want to get that effect, you can use a ramp as a projected texture - make the ramp white and turn the wrap off on both the projection node and the texture placement node. The texture placement will become solid texture placement, and anything that it intersects will be transparent.

You can invert the ramp using a reverse node, and re-apply that as a specular map so you won’t have any highlights on the invisible section - but you’ll still have the problem of no solid “fill” in between your surface geometry.

Ok, I knew that it would be a problem to get a fill between the surfaces but that doesn’t matter in my case.

I can’t get it to work according to your instructions. Where do I connect the projection and on witch object? The object that intersects my model or the other way around?
This is what i get if i connect the projection to the transparency of the object that intersects my model (see attachment).

	Attachment

The transparency should be connected to the shader that is assigned to the object you want to show the cross section. 

There are two problems here.  The first one is that you’re very limited as to the shape of the projection node - you can use a cube like you’re doing, I think you can change the type to a cylinder or a sphere bu not much else. 

The other problem is something I didn’t mention - sorry.  In the attribute editor for the projection node there’s a section called “Color Balance”; open that up and change the “default color” to black. 

Transparency is a numeric value - White = 1, which is totally transparent (that’s the white inside the projection node) and Black = 0, which is totally opaque. 

The “default color” represents whatever color or value that is outside of the region defined by the projection node.  The default value for this attribute is a 50% gray, which is giving you 50% transparency. 

See the attached file.