Custom Railing Pickets...hubboy

[rob2218]

see attached.
besides making EVERY LITTLE bit and piece of this railing a part of objects...how best to accomplish (see red question).

[rob2218]

I can't believe I'm going to have to make this "handrail" design as parts and pieces with little pickets and horizontals cause there is no "custom" handrail.
geeez.....

[alemanda]

Truss maker is the solution.
Just draw it in 2d (elevation) and transform it with truss maker.
It's easy.

[rob2218]

hubeda....hubeda...HUWhat?

please...ellaborate on your steps.

alemanda wrote:
Truss maker is the solution.
Just draw it in 2d (elevation) and transform it with truss maker.
It's easy.

[alemanda]

This is an explainig video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GA4Ye2rgK0

The only limitation is that it is not adjustable on the fly.
Enjoy!

[rob2218]

So...I'm familiar with "Truss Maker"
I guess you are then taking the approach to create a "truss" for the stair railing in angle?

Thing is...that then I'd have to determine the exact "midpoints" of the vertical pickets and the horizontal members so that I when I create the "truss" to be used as a "stair railing" it'll offset the proper amount.

So, if my steel picket members are say 1/4" thick, then the linework that is used to create the truss needs to be inboard by 1/8" in order for the truss to expand outward properly?

Yeah...and the non-parametrics on the fly don't help.

[David Collins]

Not entirely painless, but you might think about modeling it as a morph. One thing it took me a while to discover is that you can create morphs in elevation and section windows. This is really nice for things like stair railings and ramps. The 2d morph is created in the plane of the cut. Create the flat morph in a temporary section window and then extrude the depth it needs in the 3d window.

[vfrontiers]

Sorry... once again I don't have time to search thru a billion posts to find what I'm looking for...This was close...

I'm trying to create a CUSTOM RAIL (Balluster or panel) in AC21. It's a repeated pattern as shown below. First I thought I'd just draw this as a PROFILE and the Balluster will display this at a regular interval... But the profiles extrude UP and not FACE ON... ugh...

So dug deeper and see that you can call up SUB COMPONENTS for RAIL PANELS... ok... I'll just create some slabbies and save as a RAIL COMPONENT... Wait... there is no RAIL COMPONENT Save as? Looking the the MANUAL... I see that your supposed to do that with MORPHS... ok.. I make them a MORPH... But once again... there is no SAVE STAIR COMPONENT option. The manual clearly shows it available but it's on a WINDOWS platform... Is this NOT available for MAC?

Then, I presume that if I just create an old style OBJECT, I can just redefine it's SUBTYPE and I'm golden... but yet again... there are several RAIL RAILING options for subtypes, but NONE make it show up for the railing tool...

Any advise welcome...

[vfrontiers]

I did find the correct SUBTYPE... so had to create as a NORMAL object then convert to subtype...


Now what I'm seeing is that the FACE of the rail is set to the reference line, which puts it HALF A RAIL THK off center... Tried to just make an adjustment in the MOTIF obj... but no matter where I "MOVE" it to... it always thinks the FACE is 0...

I know this is alway USER ERROR for me... so be kind!
Just using the OFFSET CENTERLINE shifts the entire railing off the centerline... not just the motif

[vfrontiers]

Ok... well I guess I just have to POST stuff here in order for me to learn!

I found the HORIZ. OFFSET in the railing settings...

Good for now... Lots more to learn