Weird Railing Stuff - part 12 - Top vs Hand Rail Usage Terminology

More Revit Railing UI inconsistency:

In the Railing Type Property dialog box there are sections for Top Rail and two separate Handrail properties.  Each of these have:

• a Height property.  As noted in another post, the behaviour of the Height property is completely different for each. 
•  a 'Type Name' property
• There is also a property that you set whether the chosen type is used or not, and if so what position(s) it is in - these are also inconsistently named, which causes confusion when you first look at them:

Top Rail - 'Use Top Rail'  = Yes/No

Handrail - 'Position' = None, Left, Right, Left and Right

Why the inconsistency?  It would be so easy to make them the same - they could both be called 'Position' or both 'Usage'.  The settings could both have a 'None' option, instead of one being 'No'.

Weird Railing Stuff - part 11 - Rail Heights

 

More Railing inconsistencies in Revit

The (not so) new capabilities for adding 'Handrails' and 'Top Rails' to railings can be very useful, but the UI is riddled with weird settings and inconsistencies - this one relates to their Height Properties.

• Handrail has height property built into handrail family type
• Top rail has height property in the railing family type (not built into top rail family type)

 

• The Handrail height is displayed in the railing property dialog box, but is greyed out
• Top rail height is controlled directly in railing property (much better)

 What this means is that you can have one Top Rail family type that can be used at varying heights.

•  Meanwhile, if you want to change the Handrail height, you have to click on the hidden button to the right of the Type name - this opens the Handrail type properties for the selected handrail.
• The height can be changed here - but of course it will affect all railings that use that particular handrail type, so you probably need to duplicate type.

• This means that you need a separate handrail type for every possible height.
• It is possible to right-click on a Handrail type in the family browser, and 'select all instances in project' - it does actually highlight them individually.

• Since Revit users are never quite sure what has been used, they seldom check by this method, but typically duplicate type anyway, leading to a profusion of similar or identical types.
• For this reason, it is wise to name the handrail types accordingly - either with a specific height or with a purpose

• This will ensure that when selecting a handrail type in the railing property, you have some chance of getting the correct height.

It is not clear to me why these settings are different - I would much rather that both had height properties in the railing.  That would give us consistency instead of confusion.  It would also mean creating fewer handrail types - we already have enough variations of those to cope with the extensions.



And all this doesn't even address the fact that the old 'Rail Structure' method is still available for use to create handrails, top rails and mid-rails - and that has a totally different method and UI.  Aaargh, what a mess!