Bow top railing

[JTP Vis]

Hi,

I've not touched railclone for ages, and it feels like I've forgotten everything!

I'm trying to make a Bow Top railing like this, but don't worry about the gate at the moment:


I have the posts working as I want them on a line (that is really simple I know), and I have made a separate railclone that works exactly how I want it for the "panels", but I can't make the two work together in the same railclone!

Below/attached is what I'm trying to do. On the left is what the railing should look like (with bow tops throughout, like to the right). The bit in the red outline is to be adaptive so that the bow top bars readjust as the segment gets bigger or smaller. The part on the right is what I'd like the railing panel to look like, which should remain in a straight line between posts, and the post separation distance should be a parameter. I also want to be able to set the height of the railing with a parameter, which will maintain the top and bottom rail's relationship to the top and bottom of the railing, thus stretching the middle portion.


Can anyone give me any pointers? I'm nearly there, but bits of the panel confirm to a curve when there is one, so some bits bend, and it looks terrible.

I've also added an updated .max file (V1) which works correctly, apart from around the curves.

Thanks,

Bill

[Rokas]

Hi

Why don't You subdivide Your horizontal bars, so RailClone can bend them:

[JTP Vis]

Hi Rokas,

I have considered that and know how to implement it, but the actual panels don't bend, so I don't want mine to either.

Any way to make them come out straight?

Cheers,

Bill

[Rokas]

then two easy solutions.
Create Your spline accordingly to the design- no smooth lines.
Or even easier use Your other RC object as a segment, and disable bend:

[JTP Vis]

Hi Rokas,

Thanks again for the potential solutions.

Create Your spline accordingly to the design- no smooth lines.

That means i have to divide my line by the panel length, and end up having to work out the panel sizes. The point of the railclone object is to make a preset that solves the problems.

Or even easier use Your other RC object as a segment, and disable bend:

The problem with this solution is that when you change the panel length, the nested RC object stretches instead of adapting to the new length of panel.

If you could keep the adaptive nature of the nested RC, it would work fine. I also wondered if you could use a spline as a segment, then have an internal RC run along that spline, but it won't work as far as I can see.

Thanks for the suggestions. Other solutions still being looked for.

Cheers,

Bill

[Dragan]

Hi, please, can you downgrade your file to max2018?

[JTP Vis]

Max 2018 version attached 

[JTP Vis]

Hi All,

I thought I'd post an update, despite not solving the problem in rail clone. I have basically decided to do what Rokas suggested and make/edit the spline to work as I want it to. This is mostly because I discovered that it's not as difficult to get it correctly spaced as I thought it would be. Here is my solution (captions below the images):



The part circled in red, shows that the current railclone object does not work, with the bars conforming to the curve rather than the rails. The posts, indicated in Blue, as however in the right places, and there are the correct number of them in the area circled in green. Therefore I detached the part of the original spline circled in green.



Once the spline is detached, I applied a Normalize Spline modifier to it, which has had some significant updates to it since Max 2017, and is now rather useful!
Checking Show Knots is helpful, and Make Segments Linear. However, this does not make the vertices into corners, so when you re-attach it to the original spline, you still need to set them to corner.
Finally, when you count the posts, you need to make sure you add the start and end post to the count so that you get the number on your final Knot Count correct.

Select the original spline, attache the updated one, weld the vertices and set them to corner, and you should get the correct result.



I hope that is helpful to someone else.

If someone else finds an in-railclone solution I'd also be interested.

Cheers,

Bill