Railings at a single step "stair"

[ron.sanpedro]

I am looking for some insight about a railing at a "stair" as shown attached. The stair isn't really a stair; you have two slabs at 1' difference vertically, and 1' difference horizontally, and a sliver of slab in between. The effect is a "step" of 6" rise and 12" run. I then need a railing on either side of the portion designated as a stair. Everywhere else it is treated as a seat.
My problem is getting the rail to slope. I can give the start or end post a vertical offset, but the rail doesn't follow. As far as I can tell my only option is to do a stair of one tread? Just looking to verify I have no option but the kludge, yes? Or has someone found a nifty way to make railings work more intuitively?

Thanks,
Gordon

[Alfredo Medina]

Yes, it would be a lot easier to create the railing if the two risers were created with the Stair tool.

[eric.piotrowicz]

Possibly using the curtain wall tool and custom panels and mullion... but you were trying to avoid the kludge department.
What about making a custom baluster to create the railing slope and then the vertical offset for the bottom baluster?

[cdatechguy]

Small steps like these I create my railing as a family instead of a stair based railing. It just won't show up in the railing category.

[jspartz]

Still cheating the system, but keeping it a railing, would be to make long skinny sloped floors under the railings, hide them in 3d views, and host your railing to it.

[Phil Read]

Just build it as something else - like a generic family component or specialty equipment.

.02.

Phil

[jspartz]

Just build it as something else - like a generic family component or specialty equipment.

.02.

Phil

It really depends on what you're doing with quantities and scheduling of items. I'd rather exclude items from a schedule, then have items not show up in a schedule. But, maybe you're not concerned with the railing being a railing.

[Alfredo Medina]

Gordon,

Check out this solution. The steps are done with an actual stair with two risers. I made a couple of lines invisible in the plan and in 3D. The railing is done in 3 segments. The two extensions are set as "Flat"; the middle segment is set as "By Host"; since the host is the mini stair, this middle segment of railing follows the slope of the stair.

[ron.sanpedro]

Gordon,

Check out this solution. The steps are done with an actual stair with two risers. I made a couple lines invisible in the plan and in 3D. The railing is done in 3 segments. The two extensions are set as "Flat"; the middle segment is set as "By Host"; since the host is the mini stair, this middle segment of railing follows the slope the stair.

Alfredo,
I think that is exactly where I am going. I have probably 7 or 8 slightly varied conditions, so a railing would definitely be helpful. For a one off I suspect I would just punt to a Generic Model family, and then be bummed about the line weights not matching. The stairs actually wrap around the corned and have a lot more complexity than shown, but in the end I suspect that is still the best answer.

As for railings, it sure would be nice if you could just elevate one end post and expect the rail to follow appropriately. Perhaps in the 2015 release. :(

Thanks all!
Gordon

[kingjosiah]

...would be nice if you could just elevate one end post and expect the rail to follow appropriately....

Gordon,

I'm not sure you have to abandon the floor idea in lieu of mini-stairs. Check out the attached. Not the most beautiful rail i modeled, but hey, it's just to illustrate a point. I used the lower floor as the host, set the top and bottom horizontal portions of the rail to "flat" and the middle portion to "sloped". One of the two flat sections needs a height correction assigned. In the railing definition, the end post is set to 1'-0" above the host, thus accomplishing what i think you want.

This seems to work well if the elevation difference between your upper and lower "landings" is more or less consistent.

Sure this might be a bit fussy, but no more so than modeling lots of short stairs.

Hope this helps,
- Jon

[Phil Read]

It really depends on what you're doing with quantities and scheduling of items. I'd rather exclude items from a schedule, then have items not show up in a schedule. But, maybe you're not concerned with the railing being a railing.

Well - you're right. I'm concerned with not populating a project with Frankenrailings that won't maintain relationships to the project and will have to be updated one at a time if they get slightly longer, shorter, etc. I wouldn't suggest a huge work around just to get them to schedule as official railings, because updating/changing them will be a huge time-vampire.

The attached images illustrates this condition in another way - dozens of repetitive railings associated to a balcony. If you create these as railings and they change (unless you forgot to group them) you'll have to modify each sketch individually. If they're a family component, you can modify the family and then reload.

Create them as generic models or specialty equipment and you can still schedule them in meaningful way - and if you have to modify them you'll still get to see your family for dinner. ;) Since it's common for these kind of highly repetitive conditions to be fabricated off-site and then installed on site, maybe Specialty Equipment is actually a more accurate category?

.03

-P