Guarding is what stops you falling off an edge: a balustrade round a loft, a handrail beside a stairwell, a parapet on a roof terrace. Pick the toolbar’s Guarding (a balustrade, a handrail, a parapet — draw the run you want) and click corner to corner; each click builds a length, Esc or Enter ends the run, and clicking the first point again runs it right round. It is one run however many corners it turns, so making it glass is one change, not six. Guarding is free.
There is no keyboard shortcut for it — the tool sits in the toolbar beside the pattern and section tools.
Draw it, or let it follow something
A run you draw is built end to end exactly where you put it, with no drop test and no yielding: you drew it, so it is there. Drag a corner handle to reshape it, the ＋ on a segment adds a corner, and Alt-click removes one.
A run that follows geometry is the other half, and it is the same entity. It comes from one of three places:
- Create loft on a room, or the Floor tool’s Loft with stairs and guarding, puts a run on the platform’s edge as part of the loft.
- Guarding round the well in the Stairs panel, below.
- Add guarding on a floor opening’s panel — and, on a plan drawn before floors became parts, on a floor’s or a split level’s panel too.
However it starts, a following run:
- sits on every edge that has a real drop — at least 300 mm above what is outside it;
- stops where a wall already stands, because the wall is the guard there;
- skips an edge that comes down in steps;
- moves when you reshape what it guards, and goes when that goes.
Detach from the floor turns a following run into a drawn one, with corner handles where the runs were.
Round a stairwell
Select the stair and press Guarding round the well in its panel. It draws a balustrade round the opening the flight cuts, on the storey the flight arrives at, leaving the side you step over open. Afterwards it is an ordinary run: drag a corner, skip a side, make it glass.
The panel
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Made of | Timber posts + rail, Steel posts + rail, Glass, frameless or Solid parapet. |
| Height | Above the surface it stands on. 1100 mm unless you change it. |
| Thickness / Pane | The parapet’s thickness, or the glass pane’s. |
| Stands on | The floor or The platform, where a platform is under the run. |
| Skip a run | One button per straight run — turn the guarding off along that one and leave the rest. |
| Length | The total built length, read off the geometry. |
Glass reads as glazing in 3D and in the elevations; the others are posts at the spacing the terrace railing uses. Guarding is built as real construction, so a section cuts it like anything else.
What the plan check says
Two free findings relate to it:
- A floor edge stands over a fall — a platform or raised split level with an unguarded edge over a drop.
- Guarding has lost what it followed — the floor, split level or opening it belonged to is gone. The run is kept and reported, never silently deleted.
What this doesn’t do
- A stair’s own flight is not a host. Guarding round a stairwell guards the opening, not the flight; a rail alongside the steps is a run you draw.
- There is no Add guarding button on a floor region. On a new plan, guarding that follows a platform comes from Create loft — otherwise draw the run, which is built exactly where you put it.
- A terrace railing is a separate setting. A deck’s rail lives in the terrace panel, not here.
- No gaps by dragging. A run is skipped whole, per straight run; there is no handle for opening a gap mid-run.
- It is not snap geometry. Other tools do not snap to a guarding line.
Next
Floors, platforms and lofts for the edge it stands on, and stairs for the opening it usually goes round.