Picket Spacing

Every time I have to model a guard railing this issue has me perplexed. Why in the world would the picket spacings be driven by the measurement from center of post to center of first picket? As far as I know the building codes in north america are very similar and thus 99% of fabricators use 4" center to center for picket layouts. By removing or adding a picket and centering the whole setup, the space between post and first picket is kept under 4". The spacing can be any number, I am just using what is spec'd by building code. I have a hard time believing other companies space the pickets at 3 11/16" eg. Our fabricators have jigs that they use to layout the pickets at 4". Having to make new jigs for every railing is very time consuming! Right now I have to change Distance from post in 1/32 increments or less to get 4" spacing. Very time consuming!!

I think advance steel SHOULD have:

1. an option to set the picket spacing to a specific distance (4" in my case) , not a max. distance!

2. the ability to add or remove pickets by entering a quantity (after which the array of pickets is automatically centered between the two posts) and through that increase or decrease the measurement between post and first picket / last picket and other post.

Hi M Stiller, 

Here is a quick work arround for this. You can also see a previous post on the forum I replied on the 7 or 8th 07/14.

To be able to get all equal spaces for the macro quickly you cancheck the horizontal distance and divide it by the approximate number of spaces required…

 You enter that value into the cells and they are all shown equal…

You can choose to prioritize the distance from post or the max distance between pickets… Putting the same value in both will at least ensure that the ‘middle’ pickets are equally spaced… To ensure they are all equally spaced you can do a little check.

In the mean time Autodesk has been made aware to remove this extra step for the user.

Kind regards

Regards