Poll: Railing Tool Use

[4hotshoes]

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.

[4hotshoes]

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?

[Lingwisyer]

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.

[Nader Belal]

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

[4hotshoes]

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.

[Richard Morrison]

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?

[Barry Kelly]

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

Railings can associate to their host element.

Barry.

[4hotshoes]

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.

[runxel]

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.

[4hotshoes]

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.