Quarter turn cap railing

[Anonymous]

I seem to be struggling with creating a quarter turn cap section of my railing. Is this possible to do? Thus far I can only make a broad curve and not one tight enough to be a cap portion of the corner of the railing. In a perfect world I would be able to do this with my railing tool as it has my profile etc. I even tried to make a stand alone section to "insert" in my railing, but no luck. Is this something that has to be done in 3d massing or something like that and inserted. That is not ideal, but may do in a pinch. Please share your thoughts or examples. I appreciate it. 

[barthbradley]

I would try placing the cap as a corner post; meaning that you need to model it first course, and then put it into your railing family. Essentially, you'd   model cap from the top constraint level (offset from the base constraint level) of the post family, without anything underneath it. Do you get the concept? 

[Anonymous]

I kind of get what you are trying to explain, but I am not so sure I wont have the same issue in modeling a post. My biggest issue is combining the regular rail profile that makes the tight curve it does normally, with a "circle" or portion thereof that "extends" out at the corner to make the cap portion. 

[barthbradley]

I agree that the modeling this baluster cap would be a challenge. I would probably model the cap like I would model a hockey puck: an extruded circle with its height equal to the rail thickness. Then in "Baluster Placement", I would set it to be the corner baluster and have it slightly offset from center, and at the exact same height as the Top Rail. This way, the Top Rail would pass through the caps at corner returns to create a "bulge".  Its not perfect, but I think it would provide an adequate representation, and more importantly, it will be placed  automatically at corners when you draw that rail type. You can use a detail view to describe it more precisely.  If this won't work for you, then the only other option I see, is modeling each corner cap separately. Personally, I wouldn't bother. That LOD won't be seen anyways. I'd use a single detail to describe the join condition at corners.

Good luck to you

[Anonymous]

So essentially you would just leave off the profile and "add in" a "plain" cylinder to represent it. I can understand that it is not worth whatever hassle it is to create it, but one would think there would be some kind of simple way to do this as it is not an uncommon situation. I do thank you for all of your input. I appreciate it.