I started out writing about the ‘Handrail Hand Clearance’ property of Railings in Revit – then I realised that it would involve analysing all of the related lateral offset properties associated with Railings and each different component. It turns out to be a real “dog’s breakfast”, with at least six different ways to offset railing components, with minimal consistency between them all. So I decided to document that first before looking at how it all affects ‘Hand Clearance’.
A Dog’s Breakfast
1. Offset From Path
This is an instance property, which is applied to the whole railing and all its sub-elements. It represents a notional centreline of the railing, offset laterally (sideways) from the railing sketch line, which is placed on the edge of stair runs and landings by default.
Unfortunately there is a built-in system default value of 25.4mm, which is one inch. The logic to this is obscure – it only works if your top rail happens to be 50.8mm (two inches), and…