Explore the process of completing the handrail on the second floor of a project using a linear component pattern. Gain insight into the selection process, direction choice, instance increase, and the use of mirroring to ensure symmetry and proper placement.
Key Insights
- The article showcases a step-by-step process of creating a handrail on the second floor by utilizing a linear component pattern.
- It details the necessity of proper direction selection for component patterning and the importance of increasing the desired number of instances to align with the project's requirements.
- The demonstration emphasizes the use of the mirroring technique to ensure symmetry across the structure and highlights the importance of experimenting with component placement for optimal results.
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In this video, we're going to complete the handrail on the second floor. We've got our pattern laid out. Let's use that to pattern out this support beam right here.
All right, so we'll go to linear component pattern. And as always, we select the thing being patterned first. It's gonna ask us for a direction.
Let's pick a line moving in the right direction. All right, it looks like we're already kind of getting started. We have our pattern, so we're gonna use up to reference instead of spacing and instances.
In this case, the reference is this vertex here. Actually, instead, let's go ahead and make that this entire line. And for the selected reference, let's grab this outside line here.
Or if that doesn't work, you can grab one of the vertices. There we go. Now, we just need to increase to the correct number of instances.
There we go. Close that out. Save your work.
I'm gonna make sure that I'm working in inches. I've made that switch. I'm saving again.
And then I believe this pattern should just mirror on the opposite side. Let's see if that works. We'll start by creating that plane.
And we're gonna do a mid-plane between these two surfaces set at 45-degree angles. All right. Now, just to experiment, we're gonna mirror using that plane.
And the component is going to be this one here. Let's close it out and see how that looks. Okay, not quite.
I'm glad we ran that experiment because it is not landing inside that rectangle exactly. So this is not what we wanna do. Instead, let's just go ahead and bring in a fresh new component.
In this case, we'll just grab stair 006. And begin by mating this first one. There we go.
Coincident, coincident. Let's set this surface with this surface. Make sure they're facing the same direction.
And then we need to place this correctly. So what I'm gonna do is mate this vertex to this line and watch them line up. And then we'll close that out.
Go ahead and save your work. Now for this, I think we'll just do a spacing distance mate. First, I'm gonna grab the distance between two similar points of that pattern.
Using my measure tool, it's seven inches. All right. Let's go ahead and go to linear component pattern.
Grab this handrail. Set the direction. And then with spacing and instances, make sure that seven is selected.
Looks, in this case, it already is. And let's just increase the instances until we are satisfied. Now, we may have to check this in reference to the general assembly.
So let's go ahead and leave it 11 for right now. Close it out, save our work, and then open our general assembly. It might be one of your recent documents.
We're still working on the sub-assembly for our stairs. Go ahead and rebuild. But it may help to see them in context with the rest of the playground for us to do the sub-assembly appropriately.
Now, the reason this is rebuilding is because we made a change in our master file by adding those sketch patterns. It has now affected each of the parts in all of our general assembly. We have to wait for that to update.
Okay. Let's go ahead and insert our sub-assembly into this general assembly. And let's see how 11 instances looked.
It's pretty nice. We could have ended with 10, but we can go ahead and keep it at 11 for right now. Great.
Let's go ahead and save this and then close out our general assembly. We're gonna go back into our sub-assembly and finish the handrail. All right, here we go.
Now, I simply want to mirror some of these support rails on the opposite side. So let's create that mirror plane first. I'll start a sketch on the surface and then grab the inside of that plank, connect it to the inside of this plank, making sure I'm using a horizontal line and then set a perpendicular line to that.
That perpendicular line will be the first of the references for my new plane. And I'm going to use one of these surfaces as a perpendicular reference. And now we have a mirror plane.
With that highlighted, let's start selecting the beams that we want to mirror at. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna use my view cube to get a perfect orthographic view. And I'm gonna start grabbing the items that I want to mirror.
I'll leave this one alone. It's a little too close to that beam. We'll start here and then grab this one and see how that looks.
All right, grabbing those four turned out to be great. Let's go ahead and close that out. All right, and let's open up our general assembly to see it update.
There we go, and click rebuild. There we go. And now the rest of the handrail we will do with the stairs in the next video.
And that's it for this video. Go ahead and save your work. In the next video, we should have everything we need to finish the stair sub-assembly.
