Blender: Evenly Spaced Angled Handrails
May 13th 2017 by SDGNelson
While making the firewatch towers for Unturned's Russia map I wanted the stairs up the sides to have guardrails with evenly spaced supports connecting them to the floor without disrupting the upper face's angle. The slightly hidden away "transform orientations" feature in Blender was very helpful for this.
To access it press N, scroll to the bottom of the panel and expand Transform Orientations. Clicking the plus button with a face selected in normal mode will add a new orientation identical to that normal regardless of what you select afterwards. You can use this orientation by selecting it in the Transform Orientations dropdown list.
Now in the railing example you could loop cut the bar and then move the loops however far you need.
I've found this is generally helpful when you need to extrude angled faces while preserving the angle, for example these railings or the edges of rooftops.