Vincent BURNETTER Lapeyre Stair guy

I've been an Advance steel user for around 5 years now and I love the software, one exception.  In that 5 years I've tried using the guardrail macro too many times to count and come up empty every time.

It is absolutely and utterly worthless when you are trying to make an accurate guardrail. Ive even had trainers here from Graitec who agreed with me. There is simply no way to do the simple things that the majority of stair guardrails need and are required in my job. The diagrams in the macro are not even accurate! Just an example:

The simplest thing like aligning the end post with the top or bottom nosing is impossible to do from the macro! It even asks you if you want to use a nosing relative to start point, and then doesnt work. It aligns it parallel to the stringer! so you end up with your post being out of alignment with the nosing system line.  A simple option would be to add "do not use parallel to stringer."

I love everything else about this software.. Are there any plans to make any changes to this tool in the future? Please for my sanity :)

Dumitru,   Thank you for the reply. 

   I understand exactly what you explained. It was very clear. There seems to be nothing I can do to fix this for our needs.

I have only one outstanding thought which continues to give me hope. In my version of a.s. 2011 originally the dxf's came out correct.  A service pack or an upgrade to 2012 changed that. (im not sure which) Sadly they have since been removed from our cad computers. So I know there is a possible way to do what I am asking. Your designers do custom code for things like this correct?  This may be something we would be interseted in.  Again Thank you very much for the clear and detailed reply.

Just installed A.S. 2013 and same issue.  Could somebody be so kind as to answer this question I asked a month ago on march 13th?

Just to be clear......DFX FILES ARE BACKWARDS  CAN YOU FIX?

When I make a dxf of a channel (MC12x10.6 for example) they always show up backwards and I am forced to mirror each one so our plasma does not cut a mirror image of the part. What I mean is the dfx shows the flanges pointing towards you and not away.

Is there a way to choose which face of a channel should be shown? It takes way to long to mirror each dxf.

Thank you,
Vincent

Hello James, I have a solution to this. Thanks to tech support and a lot of digging by myself and my colleague.
this is for manual labeling only
  First thing you wanna do is click "INSERT LABEL' then at the bottom of the screen you will see some options, type C for change label.
Now in this box you can edit all the labels you want under the  USER folder.
Now the important part. In order to use your new labels you must RIGHT CLICK on the USER folder and click set as current profile.  So this is what worked for me and you will only have to edit the labels one time then NEVER do it again.  You may have to re click the user folder and set as current profile from time to time but I'm not 100% on that.

Thank you so much Philippe!  You sir are the best :)

Also to add. When I make a guardrail it has a main part to it that I can later draw using a single part process. this seems very strange that i cant do this with a standalone part. 

Please reply soon I am in huge rush. thank you so much

IS THERE A WAY FOR ME TO PUT A MAIN PART DRAWING OF A FOLDED BEAM ON A DRAWING AND THEN ON A DIFFERENT SHEET LATER ON USE THE SINGLE PART BEAM DEVELOPMENT TOOL TO SHOW IT UNFOLDED? RIGHT NOW I TRY AND IT SAYS YOU CANNOT USE THIS BECAUSE IT IS A STANDALONE PART.

When I assign a prefix using prefix settings - user- - I fill out a special prefix my company uses
(could be anything letters numbers example  D1) for all the part types but for some reason the prefixes never show up for MAIN PART folded plate or folded beam.  in as 2011 it only did this with the folded plates.

Here is what I click to clear any confusion.  
prefix settings tool > User (expand) > Default (expand) > Beam (expand) > Any, then I put my prefix in assembly on the right.  I do this for all the types listed under default.    

Can you try and see if a folded plate folded beam MAIN PART gets a prefix?
Thank you