Railing Issues.

[bskripac]

I have built a stair and somehow got a guardrails and railing to work out. The next stair that I work on and try to recreate the railing scenario nothing seems to work. I have built the stair so that the top tread can wrap around to create the landing at the floor which is actually part of the stair construction. What seems to be occurring is that the when I try to extend the railing it assumes a relationship to the top of the stair instead of the bottom. Am I going about this the wrong way or am just missing something obvious.

I have attached the model I was working on if anybody can provide some insight.

[Emanuel]

You can change the way of the railings if you change the direction of the sketch line by moving the blue dots

[dbaldacchino]

You have a couple of problems:

a) If your rail sketch overlaps into the the area which represents the landing above, it's going to get "confused" about how the railing should slope. You need to edit the landing above to be part of the other stair. Otherwise stop the railing sketch before it overlaps the landing, at which point you'll have to sketch another segment and mess around with custom height settings etc (not recommended).

b) Your pattern for the minor balusters doesn't have to be specified one by one! All you need is to set one baluster at the offset from previous for 4 1/4" and that's it.

c) Combine the handrail with the guardrail so you don't have to sketch 2 separate railings. There's no reason in your case why they should be independent from each other.

Hope this helps.

[bskripac]

Wow, that worked! I wouldn't say it was obvious but that is what I was missing.

I had no idea there was even a control for that. Is there any real way of knowing which direction that line is going when you create it or do you just have to wait and see how it comes out, then switch it?

[bskripac]

Dave, thanks for the response.

I totally understand the combination of the handrails, that makes perfect sense, and I'm not really sure why I started off with two.

As far the part B, I would do the just have things copy over at 4 1/4" but I was trying to get the larger diameter man post centered in the run. Is there a way I can do that without having define each picket?

If I were to make the landing part of the stair above won't I just have the same problem on the other end or is it easier to make the landing that is part of the stair at the bottom instead of the top?

Thanks for your help, your insight is preventing my head from banging on desk....

[bskripac]

I tried swapping out the landing to be at the bottom of the stair, but can't seem to get the stringers heights to work. I tried to adjust the type parameters of the stringer but nothing seemed to change things.

I attached an image...

[dbaldacchino]

Take a look at this....I made some slight adjustments to the stair sketch and modified the rail. Notice how I split the rail sketch in the middle. Because it has a center post defined at all segments, it puts one there. This helps control placement of posts and also simplify your minor baluster pattern (notice it's also set to "spread pattern to fit" so when the rail is split, it re-spaces to fit between the two segments).

[bskripac]

Dave,

Thanks for the response, that railing looks great and ends up fixing a couple other things I was struggling with.

Thanks for your insight