Okay, I trying to make some railing for a set of curved stairs, (see below). It’s not working how i intended. I import polylines from ArchiCad as dxf files to blender. this has to be a very accurate procedure since it’s from floor plans, and the process needs to be able to be repeated time and time again in the exact way. What would be the best way to construct the railing (the boxy portion in the pic, the the upright portions are fine.)
Thanks,
Linco
by poly lines i assuem your talking about bezier curves or equivalent
then you simply ahve to make a profile and extrude a along path in F9
that shoudl do the trick here
hope it helps
Salutaitons
Bezier nor Nurbs works for this situation. I can’t seem to get it exact. When i import the line it comes in as a 2D mesh, i then move each vert up to it’s location to form the upper part of the rail… is there anyway i can use the mesh line as a path?
select the relevant edges and run the script “edges to curve”. it ships with blender 2.49 i believe
Hey, Steeve and Ricky Blender,
Thanks for the help, the edges to curve and then the BevOB thing works great except in the area shown below, do you know what’s going on here and how to fix it. In my opinion its having trouble with the right angle in the path.
that’s quite a complex looking stair railing:)
yes i’ve seen that sort of distortion before
what about placing fillets (short curved sections) between the straight sections? it may help. not sure if there is an easy way to do that in blender…will look into it. it could prob be done more easily at the cad stage.
in an ideal situation (ie budget not a problem) i would say that on a handrail like that there would be short curved sections connecting the straights.
btw, are you modelling these stairs for constructional reasons or for visualization?
go into edit mode on the curve
then select a vertex on the curve and T-Key and rotate it
- it may correct the situation
if not then add some more vertex along and see what happen
sometimes it’smore difficult to do a corner like that
may be you’ll have to open it up and ahve 2 curves instead of one!
Salutations
hello steeve didn’t see u here for along time 
i am curios did u press the V to make the edges change angle to 90 degree ?
yeah you can easily fillet the junctions of the straight sections using the W-key>bevel tool in edit mode. that creates a chamfer of length defined by you. and you can repeat the operation to get a (pseudo) curve.
the first pic - hard corners
second pic - rounded corners
third pic- the beveled path
as you can see it helps to give better form to the rail (but could still use some more tidying up)
Attachments
sorry ricky and shay, we all posted at the same time.
ricky i like your method…like live editing
hey there shay, yes i’ve had my head down with a big project (the type that pays the bills) and no time for blender lately. but it’s good to be back! and i can see you have been busy
not sure what you mean by
i am curios did u press the V to make the edges change angle to 90 degree ?
Hey all, i fixed the problem before i was able to get back to check your responses.
This is for a visualization project. Im being made to learn blender in about a months time in order to teach in as part of my assistantship (working on my masters) the school is moving from MAX to blender. anyhow…
since the lines were imported as a mesh line in a 2D format, i decided to do the bevel while sill in 2D, the looked great, then i just seclected the groups of verts at each pole position and move (G) them up to their respective heights, everything stayed in order, and the bends looks great, everything on a 45 degree champher.
thank u steeve
well thous king of projects are a good thing…
its good to see u are back 
this is what i meant (see attached image)
Attachments
linco good fix!
shay are you refering to the sharp angles in post#4 ?
can you load up a snall file with jsut the stair ramp showing what you did as example
would lile to keep it as example and if any body needs it in futur can be sue again
Thanks