By Dennis Collin
Over the past few years, the railings object has had some major improvements in how it displays and how it can be modified to suit a specific project. There are useful ‘workarounds’ to do many external features of buildings and to present site features that are lacking in the current standard toolsets.
Although railings can be drawn freely (attached to level objects), they can also be attached to an increasing number of host objects. In the past, these included stairs, ramps and slabs but over the past few years’ users can also attach railings to walls and toposurface objects. This capability can prove useful when modelling bespoke infrastructure features and site design.
At the time of writing, we cannot currently attach walls to toposurfaces, but we can create custom profiles to railing objects, set offsets and assign materials to form wall like objects to support railings, fences, footpaths and other site related objects.
Some additional articles on the use of railings can be found here:
The standard Revit library gives some sample railing styles that can be a useful source of inspiration should the need to model something awkward in a project arise, from Brise Soleil, hedges to bespoke stairs!
Samples of railings, fences, stair, slab and wall families can be found in the ‘System Families’ folder inside the metric Revit library. These styles can be transferred or copied and pasted in to use and modify in your project as desired.
For some additional manufacturer styles the NBS national BIM library is a good place to start.