You can access the first blog from this blog series here.

Designing the Side Rails

In this blog, we will design the side-rails of the ladder.

1. Use the Place SmartLine tool to draw a parallelogram that would be extruded to form a side-rail of the ladder.
   
2. Apply the following constraints to the element:
   1. Parallel constraints – between opposite sides of the element.
   2. Fixed constraint - to the bottom-left vertex and left edge. These will fix the position of the ladder
   3. Distance constraint - to the longer side of the element with the Ladder_Height variable.
   4. Distance constraint - to the shorter side of the element with the Ladder_W variable.
   5. Angle constraint - between the bottom and left edges with the Ladder_Tilt variable.
3. Next, use the Solid by Extrusion tool to apply thickness to the side-rail element. While extruding, apply Stair_THK variable to the Distance field. 
4. Create a copy of the side-rail and place it at a distance that is constrained by the variable Ladder_Span.

This completes the side-rails. In the next blog, we will design the ladder rung.