Baluster Material

[stephanschneller]

Where do you specify the material for balusters?

I'd like to do the following:

...using a RAILING I would like to distribute piles along a path...I have setup a baluster family which contains my 'pile family' which is than being used for the profile of the baluster.

It all works fine apart from they are not showing the correct line thickness/ hatch which I thought is down to the material?

Any help would be appreciated

Regards,

Stephan

[barrie.sharp]

If you set up the baluster family from scratch, you'll need to add a material to the geometry. If you select your extrusion, you can set the material or assign it to a parameter in the properties dialog. Using a parameter, you can assign materials by family type which you can edit in the project rather than editing the family.

Hope that is what you're asking for!

[cliff collins]

You give a Material Parameter in the Baluster family.

Then load into Project and choose a material to apply to the balusters.

see attached

cheers

[barrie.sharp]

You give a Material Parameter in the Baluster family.

Then load into Project and choose a material to apply to the balusters.

see attached

cheers
Snap!:) pic'y helps!

[stephanschneller]

Thanks Barrie/ Cliff,

I've done this and it seems to work fine... for example in 3d view I can see that the appearance changes when I change the material.

The only thing that doesnt seem to work is in plan view say the balusters (piles) reach from ground floor to 6th floor...in 4th floor plan view you would expect the piles to be cut ... but for some reason the cut patten which is linked to the material doesnt appear (Im not using any overrides in this view)

any idea?

Regards,

Stephan

[cliff collins]

Baluster families are non-cuttable...........

Perhaps structural columns in an array or attached to a grid would be another method.

cheers

[barrie.sharp]

Not sure what you mean. Can you post the file or some screen shots?

[barrie.sharp]

Baluster families are non-cuttable...........

Perhaps structural columns in an array or attached to a grid would be another method.

cheers
I see now. I would agree. Why did you want to use railings?

[stephanschneller]

Cliff,

I suppose that's the anwser...what a shame.

@ Barrie, the nice thing about railings/ balusters is that it's so easy to define any path straight/ curved etc and distribuite equally any element (nested into a baluster family) along the path.

Cant thing of a similar method... ;(

Regards,

[barrie.sharp]

@ Barrie, the nice thing about railings/ balusters is that it's so easy to define any path straight/ curved etc and distribuite equally any element (nested into a baluster family) along the path.

Cant thing of a similar method... ;(

Regards,
Fair point, I've used railings for distributing along a path. Shame we don't have an Array along Path tool. You could create a baluster with just a symbolic crosshair. That would at least plot the location for each column.