topic Re: Poll: Railing Tool Use in Modeling

Poll: Railing Tool Use

4hotshoes — Tue, 23 May 2023 16:00:08 GMT

I would like to know how other people work creating railings for a project, so I created this poll. But I wish the Railing Tool was easier to use. Or that comprehensive detailed and useful training was available. While it can do amazing things, I struggle to make it do specifically what I want. I would like to know what others do. Fill in the poll with all of the options that make reflect your experience.

Re: Poll: Railing Tool Use

4hotshoes — Wed, 29 Jan 2020 14:10:42 GMT

At this time 62 people have viewed this post and maybe 2 people voted? Come on people. How hard is it to click a vote? Is the Railing Tool useful?

Re: Poll: Railing Tool Use

Lingwisyer — Thu, 30 Jan 2020 01:27:20 GMT

I manage fine on straight stairs and slabs, have yet to need to use it on a curve. I also use it for gutters and fascia boards, as well as quick walkway columns.

Re: Poll: Railing Tool Use

Nader Belal — Thu, 30 Jan 2020 13:05:34 GMT

In the last year I didn't have the chance to experience the rail tool in depth, but for the type of work I do it's sufficient, by the way I'm sharing a PDF file of how to use the rail tool to model roads made by my friend Carlos Lopez Figueroa

Re: Poll: Railing Tool Use

4hotshoes — Thu, 30 Jan 2020 14:12:05 GMT

Moonlight wrote:
In the last year I didn't have the chance to experience the rail tool in depth, but for the type of work I do it's sufficient, by the way I'm sharing a PDF file of how to use the rail tool to model roads made by my friend Carlos Lopez Figueroa

Thanks for the link.

Re: Poll: Railing Tool Use

Richard Morrison — Thu, 30 Jan 2020 20:49:55 GMT

Lingwisyer wrote:
I manage fine on straight stairs and slabs, have yet to need to use it on a curve. I also use it for gutters and fascia boards, as well as quick walkway columns.

What is the advantage of using a railing rather than a complex beam?

Re: Poll: Railing Tool Use

Barry Kelly — Fri, 31 Jan 2020 00:32:40 GMT

Richard wrote:
What is the advantage of using a railing rather than a complex beam?

Railings can associate to their host element.

Barry.

Re: Poll: Railing Tool Use

4hotshoes — Sun, 02 Feb 2020 20:38:58 GMT

It is interesting that no one polled so far goes to other 3D software to create railings, nor do they fake it with 2D lines.
But there seems to be a void of reliable training that those who say they have mastered the railing tool could provide.

We could use more voters. you can change your vote and you can select up to 8 statements that represent your experience.

Thanks for the comments so far.

Re: Poll: Railing Tool Use

runxel — Mon, 03 Feb 2020 11:27:41 GMT

I'm sorry, but I am not sure if better training alone really helps....
To me railings seem to be inherently broken. ┐(´-｀)┌

(This stair has an auto-generated railing by the way...)

Also stairs. They are evil in their current form: Often enough you try to do something which should work (from users perspective), but doesn't – the input from the user is disregarded without providing any meaningful feedback. In other moments your input will also be disregarded, but the whole stair suddenly changed to a completely different structure.

Re: Poll: Railing Tool Use

4hotshoes — Mon, 03 Feb 2020 20:17:05 GMT

Runxel,
I agree with the idea of the railing tool being broken, and that it could be that the problem is the Stair Tool. I suggested to GS Tech Support that the Tools were buggy, but the GS tech said that they were not because they did not cause crashes, which is true. They are very complex, too complex to know if there are problems or is just us un-trained users that do not know which buttons and levers to push or pull in which sequence.

Anyway I do not see consistent results from the railing tool when applying them to stairs. Sometimes one setting will change consistently on a slab, but to make the same change when the railing is associated on a stair, and it will not behave properly or consistently.

Those who have attempted to provide training (Bobrow) have run into these inconsistencies where he says he was able to do what he wanted in a specific sequence before training, but then is unable to get the same results using the same sequence while training. Frustrating! Therefore training is not helpful.

Re: Poll: Railing Tool Use

runxel — Mon, 03 Feb 2020 21:42:11 GMT

4hotshoes wrote:
They are very complex, too complex.

Yes indeed, this is a very big problem. Not only in Archicad, but programming in general and it's even true for our whole lifes nowadays.
But especially programmers should worry about the rate the whole industry is burying everything under more complex layers, and then putting more complex layers on top. Nobody can grok that anymore.

But as you said: I would argue that the tools are buggy and broken, since their behaviour is non-deterministic. How could this pass QA? Is there even QA? But even as a programmer? How can I responsibly design a system, which never works in the same way?

And what a weird way to define buggyness! It bewilders me – is this the standard you want to set, GS?
If your software crashes you're already way beyond any meaningful discussion.

Think about that: If architecture would be as bad as IT... "Oh well, another house collapsed. Meh..."

Re: Poll: Railing Tool Use

Carstenem — Thu, 06 Feb 2020 01:27:31 GMT

Yes programming this would be quite difficult.

As a tip use the tools you got to create the stair and railing you are after. What I mean is first don't use automated railing, or the space bar magic tool on a stair, this will most likely not work.

If the railing tool can't handle it then model the railing another way, there are plenty of options. I think many times people try to get to the end product "the easy" way.

Saying this EVERY Software will struggle to create 3D stairs. Some might say then, well don't have a stair and railing tool if it is not working or buggy. Mmhh I rather have a tool that works for 70% of my stairs then none at all.

Could it be better ? Of course it could and it would be nice.

Re: Poll: Railing Tool Use

4hotshoes — Fri, 07 Feb 2020 18:22:49 GMT

I was just thinking of what might make the Railing tool easier. If the user had more control with predictable results, this is the goal. Maybe it needs to have the option for manual placement of posts and inner posts as a step one. Then step two would be to link those posts with a rail between? This is often the frustration; the placement of posts is by sophisticated program guessing what the user might want.

Let the user have the option for control. The user would control location, base height, top height, rail connection points and how the rail terminates into a post (sloped or horizontal. I think it is too much effort to figure out how the rail tool works. Let the user take the lead and the Rail tool should follow. Take the complex computer guess work out of the equation. Make the tool simpler.

So in essence, as an option, the Railing Tool would not have posts that it creates but that it could be controlled by post that the user creates. In this scenario, I am not sure if inner posts would be automatic or manual too. I am in favor of manual, at least as an option.

Maybe the posts can respond to each step or not at all in terms of snapping to a base height. If three post do not align, let the rail follow the miss alignment. Each post could be created from the column tool or objects and each could be unique. They become posts by the user selecting them in sequence.

Shall I post this as a wish? Any input to make a better suggestion?

Re: Poll: Railing Tool Use

Laszlo Nagy — Sat, 08 Feb 2020 14:11:05 GMT

4hotshoes wrote:
Shall I post this as a wish? Any input to make a better suggestion?

Yes, I think you should. If you do, please post a link to that thread here.

Re: Poll: Railing Tool Use

4hotshoes — Sun, 09 Feb 2020 01:30:58 GMT

Here is a link to the Wish for a new Post Tool.

https://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=69026