Product help with community knowledge
Version
Revit
HomeRevitEnglishCommunityTips and TricksModelingUse Divide & Repeat to Create A Curved (elevation) Railing

Community Scoring

Was this page helpful?

Tag Tags0

This page has no tags

Page statistics

2963 views,  2 edit(s),  5300 characters(s) Page last modified 08:05, 18 May 2012 by loboarch
How to add your knowledge

Use Divide & Repeat to Create A Curved (elevation) Railing

    Table of contents
    No headers

    Name: blog_curved_railing_01.jpg Views: 94 Size: 31.1 KB

    The Divide & Repeat feature has come to fill a void in the conceptual design environment: arrays. Have you ever tried, in the conceptual design environment, in Revit 2012 and before, to select an object, go to the "array" tool, just to find it greyed out, completely unavailable? Well, now in 2013 we can create arrays in this environment, and not only "radial" and "linear" as in a project or in the regular family editor. Now we can create a linear or curvy array by dividing a path (line, arc, or spline), and we can make repetitions in surfaces as well, which in summary goes beyond the possibilities of the former array tool.

    So, even though there might be other solutions for making a railing in this way, I wanted to test the Divide & Repeat feature for this challenge, and it worked very well. My conclusion is that even though this feature is not a replacement for railings, as it has been commented in some posts in forums, it is indeed a very good addition to the set of tools, to resolve especial cases that cannot be done with the regular railing tool.


    Making the division and repetition

     

    You need to create an item to be repeated, outside of the family where the divided path will be. This family needs to be started with the generic adaptive template, and the geometry in this family must be hosted on an adaptive point. Otherwise, the "repeat" or "array" tool will remain unavailable, as it was in 2012.

    You can place parameters in the element that you want to repeat, as shown in this image, where at least the height of the baluster is controlled by a parameter named as "h". If you plan to tie this height to a local parameter, do it before applying the repetition. The parameters of the object will not be available afterwards.

    Name: blog_curved_railing_06.jpg Views: 45 Size: 8.0 KB


    Then divide the path. This is simple. Just select a path (line, arc, spline), and click on the new tool : Divide path. The default division will be 6. The properties dialog box will show several different options for the division. For this exercise of the railing, I chose "minimum distance" = 4" .


    Name: blog_curved_railing_07.jpg Views: 45 Size: 10.6 KB


    Nest the item to be repeated. Check the placement point. In this example, I used "place on face", which worked well. Place the item at any of the points of the divided path. Tab, if necessary until you see "Point of divided path" at the status bar; then click.


    Name: blog_curved_railing_08.jpg Views: 44 Size: 9.2 KB


    Then, select the item, and, if everything went well, the new "repeat" or "array" tool will come to life, and the repetition will be created as specified.


    Name: blog_curved_railing_09.jpg Views: 45 Size: 15.5 KB



     

    The following video starts when some points have already been created in a family that began with a generic adaptive template. Each set of three points aligned vertically in the front elevation is associated with the position of the lower point, which is an adaptive, placement point. Some of the repetitive or not very relevant actions have been omitted from the video. Let's see this in action:

    Get Adobe Flash player

    Trivia note : In making this video and using Divide & Repeat to make this railing, I found a spelling mistake in the software. At some point in the video, the cursor stops at that word for a moment. Can you find it? This does not affect anything, of course, but I would be curious to see if programmers care about these tiny things and take the time to fix them, even having a thousand things to do that are more important than this. I might remember to watch this in future versions, just for the sake of it...
     

    Comments

    Comments8

    • loboarchFri May 18, 2012 8:09 amThis article was originally published by Alfredo Medina at his blog.
    • Alfredo_MedinaFri May 18, 2012 11:28 amAdditional comments:

      I had made a longer version of this video showing other stuff but then the video became too long, so I had to abbreviate it, omitting some steps: You need to set the baluster element family to stay "always vertical", and the placement point to be "vertical in placement". Then load it again into the host family that contains the divided path, where you need to place it on a point of the divided path, using "place on face". In this host family, the 3 placement points need to be "orthogonal in placement", and the family itself "always vertical", too, because the railing is going to be sketched in an elevation view of the project, on a workplane, such as a grid, as shown in the video.
    • loboarchFri May 18, 2012 11:52 amThank you for the additional clarifications Alfredo.

      Jeff Hanson
      Sr. Subject Matter Expert
      Autodesk, Revit User Experience
    • KDolleyFri May 18, 2012 12:09 pmGreat article Alfredo! thanks.

      ~Kevin Dolley, The Revit User Experience Team.
    • Eduardo2012Thu Jun 21, 2012 9:44 amAfter making the single post family, then I did the repeated baluster family also in a Generic Adaptive template (this is not clearly specified in this tutorial). However, after having all my posts repeated, when trying to get to the next step of inserting the circular railing profile I get this message:
      "While loading 'M_Circular Handrail': Can't load detail families into families created from the "Pattern Based" template."
      What's wrong here? The families I'm creating are in the Generic Adaptive templates, and the circular profile I'm trying to load comes with the application families from the "Profiles-Stairs". This should be a pretty simple, logical and straightforward process. Help truly appreciated!!!
    • Alfredo_MedinaThu Jun 21, 2012 10:08 amHello, Eduardo; answers to your questions or comments:

      1) This article shows some aspects about using divide and repeat to create a railing, not absolutely all the steps. For that, please refer to other articles in the Wiki about this feature, such as: http://wikihelp.autodesk.com/Revit/enu/2013/Help/00001-Revit_He0/0135-Prelimin135/0204-Conceptu204/0319-Associat319/0326-Componen326

      2) The circular profile is a generic model family, not a detail family.
    • Eduardo2012Thu Jun 21, 2012 11:14 amPlease correct me if I'm wrong but i believe this tutorial is incomplete. Remember that people who are interested in following these tutorials are mostly beginners, we need to be shown all the steps involved in how to do things. I've spent several hours in this which is something that with the complete information would take just minutes.
      I just don't succeed in curving the railing when moving the middle base adaptive point!!! What's the trick here? How are the base adaptive points related or locked to the whole railing?
      I guessed I needed some dimension parameters, so for the points above the adaptive ones I gave them an "offset from base" dim parameter, and then a "mid height" parameter from the offset point to the top point.
      Well THE POINTS move when I change the parameter values, but the railing just does not bend nor move!!!. Furthermore if I just drag the middle adaptive point as in the video, absolutely nothing happens. I've watched the video so many times and spent hours trying to solve these mysteries. Please give us the complete information.
    • Alfredo_MedinaThu Jun 21, 2012 11:42 amFor your information, this was originally an article that I published in my blog, to show an application of the new "Divide & Repeat" feature, and then it was classified here under Tutorials, but the original intention was just to explain the possibilities of the new feature.
    Powered by MindTouch
    © Copyright 2013 Autodesk, Inc. All rights reserved.   Privacy Policy — Legal Notices & Trademarks