Bug or User Error? Wall definition Line Styles and Colors ignored in railing wall definitions

[OldBarnDesign]

Hey all, this is X15 Beta BTW, though I'm pretty sure I can replicate it in X14 too...

 

It looks like plan view line styles and colors in the wall definition DBX gets completely ignored for railings. Is this by design, a bug, or am I just missing something? The video shows it pretty plainly.

 

Thanks!

Cody

2023-03-04 15-16-00.mkv

[DBCooper]

I don't think you're missing anything.  That's just the way railings have always worked.  The wall type definition is not used when they are drawn (but it will get used if you have a portion of wall above or below the railing).

 

So now the question is, what do you want it to look like?  Maybe someone can come up with a good workaround.

 

[OldBarnDesign]

Thanks DB, I only started using Chief when X14 came out so I wasn't sure...

 

I came up with a workaround but was hoping that with the new X15 rail enhancements I could avoid it. The additional controls to offset newels and beams does make offsetting porch columns off the edge of the porch slab much easier in 3D; however, the railing wall definition still in fact sits on the edge of the room/porch (which makes sense since they are used to define the room). For example, you draw a porch using railing walls, then use the new horizonal offset to move your newels/columns 6" away from the edge of your porch slab. While the newels and beam now move in 6", the wall itself hasn't really moved, so any 2D representation of the wall gets shown in addition to any rails and newels (if you've selected them to show up in 2D.)

 

What I'm looking for is 1) I want to see the edge of the porch slab, 2) The columns on my porch, 3) a dashed line showing how the beam connects to all the columns. Right now the columns render fine, but for the beam and edge of the slab I have to draw 2D polylines (green arrow). The other thing I don't particularly like about doing porch columns using rails is that in order to achieve irregular spacing of your columns, you have to place doorways in your railing wall (red arrow) which works, but it takes a lot of massaging to get columns positioned right. Plus the 2D looks slightly different.

 

Rather than spending hours wrangling with the railing settings, I'm thinking it's probably just easier to define your porch rooms using invisible walls, call the room a slab, then use 3D solids for all the columns and beams. I'm going to try that next time and see. If you have any advice to give, I'm a very willing learner.

 

[MPDesign]

I would use post and ceiling beam tools to get them where you want.

[OldBarnDesign]

2 hours ago, MPDesign said:

I would use post and ceiling beam tools to get them where you want.

In the Framing tools? Interesting thought, I'll dig into it. Thanks!

[DBCooper]

I think I agree with you and Michael.  I would just define the porch room using invisible walls and then just manually place the posts where you want them with a beam across the top.  Whether you use framing posts/beams or poly solids I don't think makes much difference unless you care about the material list.  No automatic way that I know of to make the railing draw the beam using a dashed line the way you want (although you might want to send in a feature request for this).

 

One other thing, if you want better control over where the program puts railing posts, instead of using a doorway, you could add a wall break.  The main problem with this method is that the program will try to merge the walls back together unless you change something about them so that they won't merge.  Some people like to flip one of the walls but I don't think that will work very well if you are offsetting any of the railing bits.  I will sometimes just use a different layer to keep them from merging.

 

[OldBarnDesign]

2 minutes ago, DBCooper said:

One other thing, if you want better control over where the program puts railing posts, instead of using a doorway, you could add a wall break.  The main problem with this method is that the program will try to merge the walls back together unless you change something about them so that they won't merge.  

 

Interesting tip! Thanks DB. I'm going to experiment a bit on upcoming projects and see which is the easiest.

 

Cody

[glennw]

6 minutes ago, DBCooper said:

One other thing, if you want better control over where the program puts railing posts, instead of using a doorway, you could add a wall break.  The main problem with this method is that the program will try to merge the walls back together unless you change something about them so that they won't merge.  Some people like to flip one of the walls but I don't think that will work very well if you are offsetting any of the railing bits.  I will sometimes just use a different layer to keep them from merging.

 

Or you can toggle off Auto Merge Collinear Walls.

[Kbird1]

On 3/4/2023 at 1:22 PM, OldBarnDesign said:

Hey all, this is X15 Beta BTW, though I'm pretty sure I can replicate it in X14 too...

 

It looks like plan view line styles and colors in the wall definition DBX gets completely ignored for railings. Is this by design, a bug, or am I just missing something? The video shows it pretty plainly.

 

Thanks!

Cody

2023-03-04 15-16-00.mkv 13.2 MB · 7 downloads

 

I think you can get what you need via the Railing Wall's , Newels and Baluster Tab  IF you uncheck use Defaults under Plan Display, I also uncheck Balusters and Panels after doing that , and apply a Fill Style

 

   

 

 

M.

 

 

[OldBarnDesign]

7 hours ago, Kbird1 said:

 

I think you can get what you need via the Railing Wall's , Newels and Baluster Tab  IF you uncheck use Defaults under Plan Display, I also uncheck Balusters and Panels after doing that , and apply a Fill Style

 

   

 

 

 

Thanks! I'll give that a go!