Stepped Stair Railing Top Rail Extension in Revit

Following on from an earlier post about stepped railings, here is a bit more information about what happens when you try to add Top Rail extensions.

Weird Railing Stuff - part 18

If the lowest boundary line on the railing path has a Slope property "By Host", the railing segment will be horizontal (assuming you have done a Height Correction on the other segments)

To add an extension to the base of the stair railing:

• Tab-Select the Top Rail only

• Edit its Type properties
• Tick the checkbox for "Plus Tread Depth";  Apply or OK

• Nothing happens
• Revit thinks that this segment of the railing is not part of a sloping stair, even though we know it is
• Edit the Extension Length property to 300mm
• This time Revit adds the extension (horizontal), as expected (but still no extra tread depth, unlike the straight handrail on the other side of the stair, where it has both)
  

•  Confusing huh?

Solution

To solve this, the Slope property of the railing segment must be changed:

• Select the whole railing

• Edit the path
  

• Select the last segment of the path
• Change its Slope property to "Sloping"

• Finish the Path sketch

• The Top Rail should now be sloping and have both the 300mm extension (horizontal) and the extra tread depth (sloping)

Both railings should now match