Railing/fence tool - reverse direction?

[hollister design Studio]

I have a custom post that is directional.

 

I keep starting from the wrong end and my post are backwards...

 

Is there a way to reverse the direction of the path?

[michaelk]

Great question.  

 

It must use a path object when creating the fence, but it's not available in edit.

 

So I don't think the direction can be changed, but I hope someone proves us wrong.

 

(It might be easier to make a new post symbol that is the original post symbol rotated 180 so you always have an option) 😃

[hollister design Studio]

I though it must be a path too...

 

On 8/14/2021 at 11:03 AM, michaelk said:

...(It might be easier to make a new post symbol that is the original post symbol rotated 180 so you always have an option)...

This is what I did, I now have 'Post' and 'Post-Reversed' symbols for my odd steel angel railing post.

 

I had tried to use DAP as I find the railing/fence tool... slightly less than useful... for landscape design.

But the DAP tool was throwing my posts all over the place EXCEPT where I wanted them.

 

With the reversed post symbol and a lot of '3D Line Mode' tweaking I finally got my curved multi landing ADA ramp railing to work.

 

 

 

[hollister design Studio]

56 minutes ago, hollister design Studio said:

...and a lot of '3D Line Mode' tweaking..

I wish the rail/fence tool could follow a 3D polygon!

Drawing single segments at a time (and no curves) are... a bit frustrating.

[Tom W.]

Agree totally the Railing/Fence tool is in a league of its own...

 

[Pat Stanford]

Three things:

 

1.  The Rail/Fence tool will follow the curves of a polyline. Either switch modes in the middle of using the Polyline tool, or draw the polyline and use the AEC:Create Objects From Shapes... menu item.

2. The Rail/Fence tool is more complicated internally than we like to think.  I have managed to write a script that will reverse the path polyline in a Rail/Fence object, but I have not yet found a way to get it to force the correct redraw.  If you use the script to reverse the curve, then double click to edit the path AND move a point on the path, then the object will redraw with the posts reversed.

3. It would probably be easier to use a script to get a reversed Path object and then use the Create Objects From Shapes, but I have not had time to play with that yet and make sure it takes on the same settings as the original Rail/Fence.

[Tom W.]

5 hours ago, Pat Stanford said:

1.  The Rail/Fence tool will follow the curves of a polyline. Either switch modes in the middle of using the Polyline tool, or draw the polyline and use the AEC:Create Objects From Shapes... menu item.

I believe @hollister design Studio is talking about drawing a fence in 3D. Here your options are limited to drawing your fence as a series of standalone straight line segments.

[hollister design Studio]

12 hours ago, Tom W. said:

... drawing a fence in 3D...

This.

 

You CAN use 'ACE:create object from shape' to create a fence with a 3D Polyline, but it only seems to take the X and Y coordinates and creates a flat fence.

I thought it would be useful for landscape designers if the fence would follow the z dimension too.

 

 

[Tom W.]

I tend to draw a 2D line in Top/Plan as a guide, convert it to a 3D Poly, send it to the surface of site model, then in 3D view draw the fence along that 3D Poly, eyeballing where I want runs to start + finish as it follows the terrain. What would be really useful would be to be able to keep clicking + draw the fence as a single object as it goes up + down rather than having to stop + start again for each section + messing around with the settings to remove the last post of one section + extending the frame to meet the first post of the next section.

 

It would also be great to have proper fence styles rather than saved configurations of settings.

[hollister design Studio]

@Tom W. I've never done the send to surface step, thank you!

The whole remove first or last post is awkward...