Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Railing as Egress Paths

I've written about this before, egress stuff seems to be popular at times. A railing is a path and profile based element is easy to sketch something like the path to an exit. Straight and arc segments as well as even sloping conditions. Some of the other methods that I've written about here have the advantage that they can document the total length easily. A railing schedule will report the total length but we can't tag them with their total length.

Case-Apps to the rescue!

They've written a little application that is part of their larger suite of free, subscription and beta software for Revit. It's called "Send Railing Length to Selected Parameter".


Create a shared parameter called "Egress Path", add it to your project and assign it to the railing category. Sketch your railings disguised as egress paths. Now tag them. Oh right you can't show that value. Edit the tag family to create your own and use the same shared parameter. Reload the family and still nothing. Now use the Case app. It will let you select the parameter to use and plug the total length into each railing and that value will appear in your tags!

It's not automatic or fool proof. But it does make it a lot easier to consider a railing. If you like special graphics at the beginning and end of your egress paths then a railing is a bit fussier because you need some special "balusters" to get unique "symbols" at each end. Not impossible just a bit more work. Not necessarily more or less work than the other techniques, pick your poison!

While you are at it you should consider the rest of the pile of apps they have. You'll get their apps manager application which really makes it pretty easy to get and install them. I had both 2012 and 2013 installed in a few minutes after registering.

Thanks Case-inc guys! (wearing my T-Shirt as I write this, they gave me a shirt at RTC in Stone Mtn. in the interest of full disclosure)

4 comments:

Valkin said...

I like the railing idea, I've used. I've used some of the railing from Case as well(thanks guys) But I've created a railing tag that gives me to overall length of the railing with the built in railing length parameter min 2013. Am I missing something that this add-in does?

Steve said...

Revit 2012 did not offer the Length parameter for railings, new to 2013.

Michael Coviello said...

The railing option seems to be the easiest to get the length and tags working without much complexity. Now i'm trying to find a way to set an alert (yes/no) param if the length exceeds a max value. It doesn't seem possible with a system family :( Someone please prove me wrong :)

Michael Coviello said...

I like the railing idea and it seems easy to get the tags to work without much complexity. I'd like to set an alert (yes/no) param. like the adaptive component option. This would indicate if the length exceeds the max distance. Is there a way to do this (other than a view filter?) Is it possible to do this with a railing 'system' family?