"Place Boundary Frames" for Railing?

[squall_tmo]

Hello!

I'm trying to create a enclosure using the new railing tool, but I can't find a solution to place the first and last Posts inside the the railing path and not centered...

Can someone suggest a solution for this?

[Laszlo Nagy]

This is not possible to do by default because Railing Posts are always placed centered in Railing Reference Line Nodes. Additionally, no 'Railing Post' GDL Object offers an offset parameter so the Post could be offset along the Reference Line. GDL Objects could probably be modified to provide such parameters.

However, let us think about how we could find a way to solve this right now.
My idea is to use the "Profiled Post 21" GDL Object for Railing Posts. It allows you to use Profiles defined in the Profile Manager for your Posts.
So all you need to do is to define Post Profiles where the origin of the Post is on its left side, or on its right side, for the starting and end post, respectively, or vice versa. I think this way you could make it work.

There is one additional thing you may have to do: by default more than one Posts may be selected when you click to select any of the Posts. If you right-click and use the "Create Independent Segments and Nodes" command of the context menu, each Railing Post can then be individually modified to use the proper Profile.

[squall_tmo]

Many thanks Laszlo: using the profiled post is a great suggestion!

Anyway if you can improve that feature in the GDL Code it would be great, because that way users can obtain faster and better results with a checkbox than entering "Edit Mode".

Many thanks again!

[Laszlo Nagy]

I will forward this as a wish to GRAPHISOFT. The wish will be to have the ability to define offset values for Post instances. It would probably be useful to have offsetting ability both in the direction of the Railing Reference Line and perpendicular to it.

[squall_tmo]

Yeah, I agree with your point of view.

I'm pretty new in this forum, so I'm not sure if this is the right place where to make suggestion about new features improvements and I'm not a GDL developer...

But if I don't go wrong there should be a Status Code in GDL that allows developer to make visible object's contour lines referred to navigation point of view and I think it could be useful, because the new Railing become a really powerful modeling tool.

I'm sure that it is much easier to say it than to develop it, but it should be useful.

Many Thanks again, Laszlo, for your help!

[Laszlo Nagy]

You are welcome.

Yes, I think there should be a way in GDL to control contours of these element types. Hopefully it is just an oversight in the 3D script of the Rail (I am supposing this is a Railing composed of a single Rail or Toprail/Handrail.
I will forward this also to GRAPHISOFT.