rail picket spacing

[muleman1]

I posted in another thread in 2014 and still have no answer 

I cannot figure out how to (easily with macro) set our picket spacing to exactly 4 inches on center ??? It can't be difficult, can it?? Is it the elephant in the room...??

Maybe @Kirk_bailey  @CHRIS_ASDL or @AleckGiles

[bukko]

Hi,

Unfortunately you're going to have to get out the construction calc, work in decimals and use the old fashion "fabricator" way of calc the spacings out.

The distance from post will throw you off so you have to calculate for both to get even spacings using picket centerlines and 1/2 way inset to the posts blah blah blah.

I gave up on this and just get it close these days with AST.  If you get close then you can change the tolerance of the dims when you dimension the distance manually so that it will appear to be 4" when it's 3 15/16".   As you know... unless you're running some kind of cnc cutter that will either mark or cut holes for rail pickets a decent fabricator is gonna have to lay it out on the table anyway.  We have a cnc machine that cuts &  end copes, cuts holes in pipe and sq. tube and we still need good guys to lay stuff out.

It would be nice if the rail macro was layed out a little different to evenly space pickets in all cases but I'm not sure if thats possible in a rail macro that gives you so many options.  Tekla's rail macro is absolutely worse so don't feel  too bad about using the AST one.

Regards

Craig 

ECMS

[muleman1]

is center-line spacing of pickets only a normal detail in our part of the world.....?  I have wasted enough time with this impotent macro, that I could have drawn the rails with a pencil and straight edge four times over.... I cannot express my disappointment without sounding like a ranting fool.... why are things like this not fixed ???

[bukko]

For what it's worth tekla has a "distance between faces" picket spacing setting that works really nice but I promise you.... once you work with the tekla railing macros you will appreciate the AST macro more than before. That's how I feel about it anyway.

The railing AST macro needs  a couple of enhancements imo.

1)  "Distanced between faces" picket spacing setting (including from the Rail Post too along with the individual pickets!!)

2)   Top of rail distance setting from nosing line, (should be a no brainer but if you want to nail 3'-6" rail ht on a slope in the model, it's either trail and error or you get out the  const. calc. and use trig to figure out what the numbers should be to compensate for the stinger/nosing offset before you input them.  It's ridiculous!!! 

3) Post extension in -Z axis for modeling and drawing rails that need to be core drilled into concrete.  We do many commercial jobs with this post condition and to have to extend the post manually with (shorten at UCS) or explode the macro and pull points is a waste of time.

A geek workaround is to set your reference object for the rail at a lower elevation but then you get mired down in all of the manual calcs to get the rail and intermediates at the proper ht for a code compliant rail. Another "death to productivity by a thousand re-edits issue"

These three items would greatly enhance the rail macro in my opnion.

Regards

Craig

ECMS

[AleckGiles]

HI,

AS will insist on the balusters or pickets being equally spaced. The gap between your railing posts may not divide equally by the desired value (in this case 4"). So as already mentioned by others you will need to divide the post spacing by your desired picket spacing (say 51" / 4") adn then divide the remainder by 2 to put into property "1. distance from post".

If we said the posts are 51" apart then 51/4 = 12 remainder 3.    3 / 2 = 1.5 but you wouldn't want your first baluster 1.5" form the post so try

4*11 = 44. 51 - 44 = 7.   7 / 2 = 3.5 so put 3 1/2" in the "Distance from post" box and you will get your 4" spacing.

[bukko]

Aleck,

Thanks so much for the response.  

As always your responses are spot on like a laser.!

It would be so much better if the railing macro did the math for the detailer.

The tekla rail macro does this in code.  Saves lot's of time.

Regards

Craig 

ECMS

[muleman1]

So is AS dividing the space between the faces of pickets or the center line of pickets?

[AleckGiles]

Hi,

The values are the centre distances of the members.

If you want to have a particular gap you will have to calculate some more yourself.

[Anonymous]

What you're assigning to be 4" is the MAX distance between pickets. ie, the program is automatically spacing them in between your posts in equal distances and will not exceed your 4" max distance (if it goes over 4" it adds another picket). As far as I know there is no way to space them at 4" OC and let the two end spaces be different. But that would be a great feature to add someday.

[muleman1]

@bukko @AleckGiles I used your advice on these rails and it worked on the front, but not the side... do we need to create all our rails individually to get the picket spacings to work?  Also, I originally chose each extreme end of the dummy channels to let the macro place the entire rail, but that blew the macro's mind....and mine, lol

[Anonymous]

As far as I know, if you created both rail length using the same macro, they'll both obey your 4" max rule but they will divide each length evenly for the spacing so they'll end up different. Even creating different lengths won't make them split the same because you'd put your 4" max spacing on each run and they'd divide your spacing up evenly again, like they are now.

The only way to put a consistent 4" between each picket, across both runs, is to model them in manually.

[muleman1]

@Anonymous  sad....but true. I just got completely fed up with it, (who in the wide world lays out railing pickets like that????) deleted it all, drew reference lines and modeled it all from scratch!  I'm no software dev....but neither do I claim to be a world wide leader in BIM....

I wasted 6 hrs yesterday (desperately trying to use it as designed), after I gave up and started over, I did it from scratch in less than half that time....

Its still better than LT2000i, thats what I started with. Actually I started with pencil, paper and chalkline & soapstone on a swept shop floor!...LOL

[cadgroup1]

Reviving an old post. Unbelievable in 2024 this has still not been addressed. I understand Advance Steel is in maintenance mode, but Graitec (the developer of AS) offers a "Railing Power Pack" which I purchased for close to $900. It still doesn't address the problem. Graitect - PLEASE FIX THIS. I've had shop drawings rejected because the pickets vary in center-to-center spacing. Manually placing pickets in 2024 is a ridiculous solution. At the very least, allow us to move and/or delete individual pickets without breaking the macro.

[AleckGiles]

Hi,

The core macro works "as intended". Although that is not the way a user would prefer. It is not a bug and Autodesk will probably never change it.  To do so would break all existing models that use that macro. Working out the two different centre distance values to give equally spaced posts with the desired maximum gap is fiddly to say the least. 

When placing pickets the governing factor is the maximum space permitted between the pickets. The PowerPack uses that maximum spacing setting to calculate an equal spacing of the pickets including an equal gap between pickets and picket-to-post where the gap is less than the maximum. 

If you have a problem with a model using PowerPack please contact Graitec Support so they can check what is happening and help you. The options can be complex, so maybe there is a way to get what you want with the right settings. If it is ultimately not doing what is expected the developers will be aware and can address the issue. Graitec can't fix problems if nobody reports them to us. Shouting about things in public (on forums) doesn't help. 

[sdonohoedesign]

Only a poor workman blames his tools IMO.   It is not good to over-rely on macros, and I would hazard a guess that the users having problems have little to no AutoCAD experience.

These pickets can easily be placed using a couple of commands.  It is quite easy to add a full set of balusters to a handrail manually within minutes.......