Explore the intricacies of designing railings using 3D software and discover the various options available, from unconventional designs to appealing aesthetics. Learn how to overcome the limitations of the software, think outside the box, and manipulate various elements to create your ideal railing.
Key Insights
- The design process involves a lot of trial and error, requiring you to test out different options, such as guardrail rectangular, guardrail pipe, or glass panel bottom fill, to find the one that best suits your needs and aesthetic preferences.
- There are various factors and elements to consider in the design process, including the selection of the rail type, the placement of balusters, the setting of the top rail height, and the application of a handrail. These elements need to work together harmoniously to create a cohesive design.
- Adjusting the design according to specific requirements or codes, such as the California building code, is crucial. For instance, the extension of a handrail may need to meet certain criteria, like extending out to meet the wall or going straight down. Understanding these requirements can help ensure your design is both functional and compliant.
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For the railing, what we can do is we can do a lot of different options here, and a lot of these start to become pretty unconventional because we do run into some limitations with the software. But again, that doesn't mean we can't do it, we just have to think a little bit outside of the box. So I'm going to go ahead and reset my temporary height isolate.
So sunglasses, reset temporary height isolate. And this time I want to grab my stair and the railings that are associated with it. And I'm going to isolate those using that isolate element option.
And so now I can look at the entire thing. If I were to take, say this piece here and change the rail type, so I've got a few different options here. I've got guardrail rectangular, let's take a look at that one.
So this one is actually the correct height and has a handrail built in. We're one step closer, but it's not exactly the most appealing looking guardrail here. If we were to go to guardrail pipe, same thing, we have the right height and everything looks correct here.
But again, not the most appealing. If we were to go to the next one, the glass panel bottom fill. So this is going to give us a glass panel railing.
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And these actually are great in concept, but they tend to not work out so well because you end up with these empty spaces that the model doesn't pick up. And that has everything to do with the baluster placement of these railings. So they use a two foot eight panel that gets repeated every one foot four.
And what happens is when you have something that doesn't meet those requirements, it voids it out and it doesn't actually show anything. But it does appear to have all the elements that we need to create that railing. And so if we were to take a look at it, this is actually a good example because we do have a lot of different things that we can look at and we can learn from.
If we were to select this type and go to edit type, we can see that it's using a lot of different things here. We have a top rail, which is set based on this profile. So the shape that you're seeing here is this ellipse one and a half by one and one eighth.
And it's set at three feet from the surface here. And so that's important because when you look at things like the baluster placements, these things are going to go up to the top rail element or potentially even one of the other rails. So this baluster is going to the top rail element and the glass panels are going to rail one.
If I were to look at the rail structure, you can see here I have a rail one and I have a rail two. So rail one is at two foot eight and rail two is at two foot four. And so that's why you're seeing the different break in those panels because they're all going up to different elements.
If I were to change this top rail height to what it really needs to be, which is three foot six, then those post elements that run full height will continue to do that because that's how the host is set up. If I were to go in here and actually change some of these values here. If I go to the rail structure now, you can see that if I were to change instead of two foot eight and two foot four, if I were to make that three feet and two foot eight, then this whole thing is going to move up four inches.
The other thing I can do here is I can take this same railing type and I can actually apply a handrail to it. So see how it says top rail, three foot six. Well, I can go in and I can say handrail.
So I can change the type and I can pick one, which is a circular one and a half works out really well in almost all cases. And I can hit okay. And once I have it applied, then I can assign the position.
So I can say left, right, left and right. And I'm going to go with left and hit okay. And then you can see it pops in that handrail at the location we, we prescribed it to.
So I'll select it again and hit edit type. And then I can do a couple of things with this hand as well. So the type is circular one and a half.
What's cool is we don't have to guess anymore with our extensions before we had to do quite a bit with this to make this to work and comply with the California building code, but we have a little bit more options here. So I can use the extensions of a wall floor or post extension. So a wall extension is going to extend out and then turn to meet with the wall.
The floor extension is a little bit different. If we look at these and I give it a length. So what it's saying is how far at the bottom does it need to go plus the tread depth.
So in California, we use the tread depth plus one foot. And now you can see that the floor extension is going to go out, extend that extra foot, and then go straight down. If I were to change that type from floor to a post extension, we'll have a different look and it's going to go out down and turn back for this project.
We're going to go with the floor extension. And then for the top, whatever we're going to do is we're going to change this one. We're going to use the floor one as well.
And we're going to set the length to one foot. So I'll hit okay. And now you can see we have our railing, even with all its flaws, which we'll get in there and fix here in a second.
But it does have a lot of the characteristics that we're looking for. And so the inside railing needs to have the same type. So I'm going to change this one to that glass panel bottom fill.
And you can see we have the same sort of look to it. Our next step is going to be to resolve the issues that we're having with the glass panel. So you can see there's quite a bit of inconsistency, whether it is a panel completely missing or a panel that is deciding to be on the bottom here and blowing through the treads, or one that is actually offset in the correct location.
