Fire Rated Plan Graphic

[Bimmer]

I really like this idea of railings, and thank you for sharing! Who all has been using this? Any downfalls to this approach?

Thanks!
-Heather

I have been using railing for fire tape since 2008. It is very flexible and easy to use. The only downside to it, and a big one, is that the wall does not understand the railing (fire tape). It goes against the smart modeling and BIM.

Another very minor (preference) issue is that in 16th scale, it can be small to read . . . if the detail componets are to fit inside a typical 4-6 inch wall thickness.

Autodesk really has no "real" solution for fire rating. Technically, they want each type of fire rated wall to be a wall type. In reality, you will have double or quadruple the number of wall types in your project. This is not practical.

To make smart fire rated walls, you have to go with view filters that filter by wall parameters. Then, control views with view templates. Yes, this can get very cumbersome too because you have to manage lots of view filters (say you have 11 different types of fire rated walls). For the visual crowd, you have to different what is the best hatch pattern that will work with all view scales (hatch patterns in walls are drafting only). Then, pick your poison . . . . railings or wall parameters/view filters but not both.

I haven't learn to attached a photo to this post, but our railings have colors built-in, shows dash dots variations, and diamond for smoke rating.

[CADMama]

How do you make your legend from this? Rails do not show in a typical legend and we are struggling with this right now.

[kmarquis]

Just draft in with filled regions or drafting lines what the railing fire tape looks like. You only have to draft it in once.

[L Wood]

If you are willing to bend the rules and make a railing family... why not just make a wall sweep that populates inside of the wall layer, at an elevation above your door openings etc. Not an embedded sweep, just a typical wall sweep. Then manage your views to hide or show that particular sweep via object subcategories. You could have your sweep take on whatever line style you wanted.

Maybe make a view that had all the model elements turned off except for that fire rating sweep. Overlay the fire rated line view in the world of sheets...

Just a thought.

[ttiefenbach]

Another very minor (preference) issue is that in 16th scale, it can be small to read . . . if the detail componets are to fit inside a typical 4-6 inch wall thickness.

We got around this by using the Course mode to show the tapes larger. Typically, we show the fire tapes at 3" wide on less than 1/16"=1'-0" (Which we show at Medium or Fine mode), and 12" wide at 1/16"=1'-0" and larger (which we show at Course mode).

If you are willing to bend the rules and make a railing family... why not just make a wall sweep that populates inside of the wall layer, at an elevation above your door openings etc. Not an embedded sweep, just a typical wall sweep. Then manage your views to hide or show that particular sweep via object subcategories. You could have your sweep take on whatever line style you wanted.

Even if you could get this to work effectively, you'd still see the fire tape as a line and have little to no control over the visbility. The issue with the lines is everything is rounded edges and corners. So at larger scales the rounded edges of all the dashes run together. With the railing I'm able to make the dashes and dots look like squares which makes it look much cleaner.

Maybe make a view that had all the model elements turned off except for that fire rating sweep. Overlay the fire rated line view in the world of sheets...

This does not sound like a good idea when working with large projects and multiple team members. This would be VERY dangerous.