Top/Bottom Cut Angle vs Slope Angle in baluster family?

[Ro-Ra]

As the topic title, what is the difference between the top/bottom cut angle and the slope angle within a baluster family? I seem to get the same effect when I interchange them for railings on stairs&non sloped ones but I get a different effect if the railing has a height adjustment and slope inbetween.

[Ro-Ra]

After a bit of investigation, I got a better idea on what's occuring.

- For most railings in most projects, slope angle equals top and bottom cut angle so I didn't notice any difference of using one or the other

- The exception is as above when the top of the railing has a varying height relative to the bottom of the railing.

- There appears to be a bug in where if you use the top cut angle over the slope angle, the top cut angle reference plane becomes dissassociated with the height of the baluster panel but is still associated in the family editor. So it does flex with the height parameter in the family editor but doesn't when I load it into a project. All I did was change the label from "slope angle" to "top cut angle" and "bottom cut angle". In the example above I just created a simple extrusion that I constrained to the 4 reference planes.

- I did find a workaround to the issue. I created two reference lines that begin at the intersection of the planes "Top/Bottom Cut Angle" and "Center front/back" and then continue on at an angle defined. Basically they replaced those two reference planes then I aligned all geometry to those reference lines. Then everything worked as I expected in the project.

Has anyone dealing with railings/balusters experience this issue?

[LoganAC34]

Old post, but I think I'm having a similar issue. I have a formula in a post that controls the top of the post in relation to the baluster height plane and it only uses one other parameter, the "Slope Angle" parameter. In the same railing element, I get two different results when they should be exactly the same. You can see this in the two screenshots below - the top of one post is below the horizontal line, while the other is inline with it. It doesn't matter if I swap the Slope Angle parameter for the Top Cut Angle parameter, I get the same result. It seems the Slope Angle parameter returns two different values for each post even though they both are in the same situation (level/0 degrees). 

My other thought is somehow the baluster height is (or could be part of) the issue, so I removed the formula dimension to test, and with just the baluster height, I get consistent results and they're correct for each post. If I remove the baluster height parameter but keep the formula using the Slope Angle, I get the inconsistent, incorrect result again. I even tried the trick you mentioned about using reference lines, but that didn't work. 

  

Why is the railing tool so difficult and inconsistent!!!