Baluster Spacing in Ralings

[dkoch]

I am making my first foray into custom railings, and it has been a fun day. Based on my investigations and from what I found searching here (best exemplified by this thread (http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?132682-Tricky-Baluster-Spacing-Problem)), it would appear that when using the Center option for spacing balusters, Revit always puts the maximum number of whole Patterns as will fit, and then takes the leftover and puts half at each end. I just wanted to confirm that there is no magic setting somewhere that would allow me to specify that the truncated sections at the ends should never be less than half the pattern, which is what I want for my railing (and is what the original poster in the referenced thread also wanted). I tried duplicating the baluster, thinking having two in the pattern might shift the positioning, but that made no difference at all.

As seen in the image, the intermediate brackets on the railing are balusters. The end brackets, with returns, are start and end posts. The railing models a crash rail, with a 4'-0" spacing between brackets. Revit will always give me the "A" condition, if I draw the railing with a single segment. I was able to force what I want, shown at the "B" condition, by drawing three separate segments in the sketch, with the center segment centered and 4'-1" long (making it exactly 4'-0" long resulted in no balusters). That is fine for the small example, but I do not want to have people working on projects fussing with multiple segments when one should do. Worse, if a run is just slightly larger than an even spacing, the end balusters will overlap the brackets in the start and end posts, which is wrong and looks bad. Being able to force the end segments to be no less than half of the Pattern length would solve the problem.

Thanks for any insight anyone can give, even if it is to confirm that what I am seeing is just the way Revit works.
92321

[Steve_Stafford]

Sounds like you get it...

I wrote THIS POST (http://revitoped.blogspot.com/2008/07/railings-and-baluster-patterns.html) in 2008 to describe controlling baluster/panel patterns. It's definitely quirky. Many people resort to "railings over railings" to "merge" patterns and most of the time the result will look as if it is "one railing". Another subtle thing (as you've noticed) is that you can split a sketch segment to cause Revit to consider a "single" railing to be several start, corner and ends. You may not like it but it will give you more control...you can copy a finished railing around to avoid fussing over individuals.

[dkoch]

...I was able to force what I want, shown at the "B" condition, by drawing three separate segments in the sketch, with the center segment centered and 4'-1" long (making it exactly 4'-0" long resulted in no balusters).

Just to follow up, I experimented with longer runs this morning, and could not reproduce my need to make a segment 4'-1" long to get the brackets to show up. I went back to the original instance and changed it to have 3'-0", 4'-0" and 3'-0" segments and the brackets showed up this time. I blame it on the late hour last night. ;-)