Modeling
About Archicad's design tools, element connections, modeling concepts, etc.

AC21 - Standard ADA stair railing settings

Scott Bulmer
Booster
Greetings all. Love AC21 so far especially the stair and railing tools. I have tried unsuccessfully to make the railing conform with the standard ADA extensions as seen in the attached screenshot. Has anyone been able to create this industry standard configuration and if so please share the settings. The railing profile shape is not as important as the extensions. Thank you.

ADA Railing Extensions.png
AC27 v. 4060 w/ MEP, Cadimage, Twinmotion 2023.2.2 using AC from AC6.0, 2021 MacPro M1 chip, Adobe CC. Used AC on both platforms.
3 REPLIES 3
I'm guessing that you may not have found the "Edit Setting for" and picked the handrail. Also, the icon for the wall return is confusing since it's pointing down, rather than sideways.
Richard
--------------------------
Richard Morrison, Architect-Interior Designer
AC26 (since AC6.0), Win10
Anonymous
Not applicable
Does anyone have a method of modeling ADA complaint guardrails and handrails using the railing tool? I tried the parameters Richard suggested by they do not work.
mi_jan
Enthusiast
I have, Its worked great for me. I can't always link it to the stairs, so occasionally I have to manually put the nodes at the correct height.

In my case the top and bottom are different so I edit them individually.

It helps if you look at it in 3D, Select the Hand Rail in question, click on the EDIT tab that pops up, Select the extension of the handrail that you want to modify, and press command + t ( in mac ) to access the settings for the selected element.

See attached Images for individual settings of top and bottom of handrail. In my case, since it extends 1' and then elbows down, I find it works better to add an extra node at the top instead of adding the 1' on the extension parameter and then I just elbow it down with 0" on the extension. On the bottom one, I'm not required to angle up before elbowing down so I do the 1' extension. ( note the Orange node to see the path of the handrail )

Most of the time I separate the handrail from the guardrail, It seems like more work, but its easier for me to organize it and edit one without altering the other.

don't ask me why I choose to add an extra node on the top, In my experience it has just worked better on all the instances I've tried.
iMac - MacOs Big Sur 11.6.6
Archicad 24 - Latest Build
Archicad 25 - Latest Build