Wall Mounted Handrail Issue

[kmarquis]

In Revit 2013 I'm trying to make a handrail that only consists of just one Handrail component that would be wall mounted. I like the options with the Railing component using the supports and terminations. The problem occurs when I remove the balusters in the railing. As soon as I make the handrail composition only consist of just the one Railing the handrail dissappears in 3D. It's almost as if I can't have a railing that is only made of a single element. How do you make a Handrail with only the wall mounted railing with no Top Rail and no balusters?

[Alfredo Medina]

In Revit 2013 it is possible to create railings with no definitions for rails nor for balusters. The "top rail" is defined in the type properties of the railing, without going into the other dialog boxes for railings and balusters. You can specify the height and the type of profile. The result will be just one horizontal element. In the sketch, you can turn the corners towards the wall, at both ends. If you need something more realistic, you could create special baluster families that turn the corners nicely with a round tube and a plate to attach the handrail to the wall. Does that help?

[kmarquis]

Yes this is how I understand it to work but that's not the problem I'm having. I'll walk you through what I did. I took one of the railing assemblies from OOTB. I did a duplicate and made a rail called Handrail Only - Wall Mtd. I scrolled down in the Type Properties and removed the Top Rail and left the Handrail. I went into the Balusters and removed all of them. It was then that I had the issue of the railing disappearing in 3D but still getting the Plan graphic. I know the old way of making a railing by going into the railing dialog box and adding a series of profiles. Try to do this same procedure and tell me if you can get it to work.

[Alfredo Medina]

Ah, ok, I followed the steps that you described, and I can see the handrail in 3d, no problem. Can it be some visibility settings in your 3d view?

[kmarquis]

Really?! Ugh. That's frustrating. I could see the railing just fine in 3D and then when I make the changes to the rail and balusters the railing disappears in 3D. I'll have to play around with it again when I get back to work on Monday. Thanks again for your help Alfredo.

[dbaldacchino]

...In the sketch, you can turn the corners towards the wall, at both ends...

You know, for the life of me, I cannot get this to work. I've tried naming workplanes and selecting them to no avail. I cannot seem to be able to sketch any extension other than in the vertical plane, in-line with the railing sketch, even with "Extension Style" set to Wall. I'm beginning to wonder if the web update somehow broke this functionality. Or perhaps I just lost my mojo

[Alfredo Medina]

Hi, Dave,

Do you mean, something like a return to the wall made with settings in the railing properties? If that is what you are trying to do, it's not going to happen. Notice that in that sentence in the quote, I said "In the sketch,..." I was just talking about a short line in the sketch towards the wall, manually, not automatically. Then, I said, that... "If you need something more realistic, you could create special baluster families that turn the corners nicely with a round tube and a plate to attach the handrail to the wall. ".

The only thing I've seen that is done from the dialog box is the supports of the railings from the wall. But not the corners towards the wall. I hope it helps.

[dbaldacchino]

Alfredo, you actually can get a horizontal sketch if you set the top rail/handrail extension parameters to "Wall". I got it to work with the Handrail families, but had no success with the Top Rails. I posted a comment on Autodesk's wikihelp and Lisa replied, stating that it works on Top Rails as well. The length of the turn/bend is depenent on the new "Hand Clearance" parameter, which together with the profile size, will determine the length of such bend. So it has to be larger than zero and the railing I was messing with had the top rail hand clearance set to zero, thus no horizontal bend was generated (and the software gave no feedback). Anyway, the other issue is that to modify the sketch angle, you cannot simply drag the endpoint of the sketchline since it stays constrained to the direction of said sketch line, so you have to use the rotate tool to achieve that instead, which is very quirky (same applies to vertical sketches). The topic and comments can be found here.

[Alfredo Medina]

...The length of the turn/bend is depenent on the new "Hand Clearance" parameter, which together with the profile size, will determine the length of such bend. ...

Ohhh... interesting, I did not know that it was possible to do it by settings. I will try this later, and I will report whatever I find. Thanks a lot for the information.

[Alfredo Medina]

Well, I could make the handrail have returns to the wall, using the dialog box settings, both with fillet and miter returns. However, the fillet return would work for one end of the handrail only, but not both ends at the same time.