Custom Blocks Do NOT Work Right On Railings.

[Libbya]

Adding custom blocks to the Model display for railings does not work right.  If you add a component to a handrail, guardrail or bottomrail and select that it add it to ALL of them, it only adds the block the the center of the entire railing object.  If you ask that it scale to width, it makes the block the right widt to fit between the posts, but agin, only adds the one occurrence at the very center of the railing.

I'm currently working on a 'Mesh' railing.  Basically a railing that will have wire mesh installed in the spaces between the posts.  Attached you can see a few screenshots.  I created the vertical lines of the mesh by adding a line block to replace each of the ballusters which worked brilliantly.  I then wen to add the horizontal mesh by attempting to add a block of the 12 horizontal lines to ALL Guardrails.  As mentioned above, it only adds the block the the very senter of the entire railing object so the one occurrence of the block actually centers itself on the center post.  Gah...

I'm off to bang my head on my desk and make a railing out of a curtain wall [insert rolling eyes].

[dbroad]

Looks like you might have a fundamental misunderstanding of the use of blocks related to railing.  If you want a cross-mesh for the balaster part, you might want to do as attached.  Although what you want would be nice to have (repeating blocks, once per space between posts), its not what we got.  You could use a handrail profile with a mesh material applied to it or model it with a replacement balaster block as I have shown(see attached).  Good luck.

[Libbya]

I thought of that same solution several hours ago.    That said, I'm curious what you feel is my 'fundamental misunderstanding".  I think I have a very reasonable understanding of the way the blocks 'work' (and I use the term very loosely) on railings and the way that the blocks are set up WRT scaling makes those options useless. 

[dbroad]

Perhaps that was a poor choice of words on my part. It would be better to state that the dialog box all option wrt a handrail/guardrail/bottomrail/ block implies a repetitive arrangment that doesn't exist.  

 It's too bad that they did not implement the baluster option as a non-repetitive filler panel option that could be subsituted by stretchable blocks.  The workarounds that I have seen for panel balusters are to change the profile of a handrail or bottom rail to serve as a panel.  That is not really a good workaround because railings are continuous through the posts and can't be constrained by the leftover distance between posts to leave a gap.