Hi,
I am trying to use the follow me tool to create a visualisation of a curved handrail on stairs.
i can get the handrail to follow the a line but it goes off axis which is a bit of a pain…
any help would be appreciated.
Balustrade.skp (519.8 KB)
Use Eneroth Upright Extruder from the Extension Warehouse. It’ll do what you need.
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Thanks for that giving it a go now…
To get upright extruder to work for that path, you need to align the profile (the handrail cross-section) with the end of the path before invoking it. To get alignment with the section at the bottom, you need to position the same place in the profile as where the path meets the bottom section. You may also need to set the “upright vector” via menu option.
Your starting section wasn’t perfectly upright, so it was a bit fussy to get it aligned with the end of the path (for the extruder to work correctly the profile has to be just a wee bit off the end of the path). I used a blue axis vertical. I also had to create a component and scale it way up to avoid losing small faces. The faces came out back-face outward, so I had to reverse them. Finally, the extruder left a lot of edges that I needed to hide. Here’s what I got:
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top man, i just made it worse … trying again now
@DaveR, I often see that one of your posts and others “will be deleted”. Why is this happening? I don’t see answers double posted. @shaunjoy86’s second post makes no sense now.
That happens when one of us makes a post and then realizes it wasn’t quite correct, so withdraws it. The forum software hides the content and shows that message. As you note, if someone saw the original and started a response before the post was hidden, one can’t make sense of the reply.
Dave kindly restored his post, so the train of thought now makes sense again!
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Yes, I posted the answer but then as I was playing with the model, it wasn’t working correctly so I wanted to edit the reply. Then I got called away to fix an anesthesia machine in surgery and couldn’t get back to fix it. Fortunately Steve came a long in the interim and took care of the fix before I could get back to show the required modification to make it work.
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@slbaumgartner, @DaveR, thank you both for clarifying. At least no one got hurt.
My extrude handrail works on your curve. I did increase the number of edges near the transition around the the quarter turn. No other cleanup necessary.
This is part of my stair maker plugin. You can add in your own profiles.
Thanks gkernan,
which is your plugin? I will have a butchers when I am back in the office
stairmaker plugin - available from Extension Warehouse, Sketchucation and from my Web Site.
You have to set up an account on my website in order to run it. You can then go to the downloads page and download the most current version.
There are 7 buttons
- Stair Maker - creates curved stairs
- Extrude Handrail - Creates a handrail from an existing path. Can be used to finish of the bottoms of curved stairs.
- Glues edges together to form a proper path.
- Adds your own handrail profile to the list.
- Sets up a stair -nosing, tread thickness, riser thickness, total rise and number of risers for a 2D stair.
- Creates a 3D tread and riser assembly from the 2D pattern
- Creates a 3D path from a 2D path.
Curved stair
Creating a 3D tread assembly from 2D including a volute.You select tread face and arc that makes up the front nosing and click the 3D button.
Go to my website, create an account, log in and go to my download page.
All of my plugins are there.
Garry
Looks very interesting, not had a chance to play with it yet though…
Interesting, but only for one computer, so not that interesting.