Bullnose Stair treads

[Catmansound]

Is it possible to put a bullnose on the stair treads? If I'm working in 3D and I have a zoomed in view facing a stairway, the edges are all square. In reality most wood stairs are bullnose, looks a big goofy, especially when I render in 5D or Enscape. thanks.

[fabrica]

not possible with the stair tool  -  you'll have to model the stairs if you want it to match reality 

[Kevin Allen]

1 hour ago, fabrica said:

not possible with the stair tool  

I thought a bullnose was possible at one time?

[Jeff Prince]

You can ungroup the stairs and manually apply a bullnose, that will save you from having to model the entire staircase at least.

[Kevin Allen]

this is a serious omission, I hardly ever use the stair tool. Only for "backstage" stuff where the look really doesn't matter.

[Tom W.]

4 minutes ago, Kevin Allen said:

this is a serious omission

 

It's not going to make the handrails look any better though 🙂

[Catmansound]

Handrails is another matter, would be nice to select a handrail shape like in railings, and yet another cool feature would be to allow for selection of an end newel post, like the fancy ones we see in older homes, I do lots of home remodeling. And on another note, although the stair feature in Vectorworks is pretty powerful tool when it comes to two story buildings, i.e. houses, as you can assign 2D graphics to show that stair on two different levels, it falls short when you have 3 or more stories, but that's another matter, reason I bring this up, if we explode the stairs we lose that feature. But then again, based on Jeff's suggestion probably could generate a bullnose extruded shape and apply to the edge of the treads. thanks all.

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

4 minutes ago, Catmansound said:

Handrails is another matter, would be nice to select a handrail shape like in railings, and yet another cool feature would be to allow for selection of an end newel post, like the fancy ones we see in older homes

The stair tool will eventually evolve.

In the meantime though, everything you have discussed and more can be done with Vectorworks standard 3D tools, including fancy iron newel posts, ornate handrail, etc.

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

@Catmansound  Just looked at the Stair Tool for the first time....cool.

 

 Anyway, you can extract a surface from the stairs.  If you extract the front surface on each tread, then "Shell", and then fillet......you get a bull nose

[Kevin Allen]

14 minutes ago, VIRTUALENVIRONS said:

In the meantime though, everything you have discussed and more can be done with Vectorworks standard 3D tools, including fancy iron newel posts, ornate handrail, etc.

I pretty much only model stairs. The tool is only good, for me, when not a visual element. I would be nice if these tools ,including walls, windows, and doors were more comprehensive,but it is what it is.

[E|FA]

1 hour ago, VIRTUALENVIRONS said:

Anyway, you can extract a surface from the stairs

You can also Ungroup the Stair object to explode it into editable parts.

[Catmansound]

3 hours ago, VIRTUALENVIRONS said:

The stair tool will eventually evolve.

In the meantime though, everything you have discussed and more can be done with Vectorworks standard 3D tools, including fancy iron newel posts, ornate handrail, etc.

thanks, I'll have to dig deeper and see if I can find how to put a 3D selected newel post into the end of a stair rail, didn't find a way yet other than just dropping one into place on top of the last tread. Same for showing a stair in multiple floor stories and then having that show up on each floor plan, like for a 5 or 6 story building? So far I found only being able to select one additional story from the stair 2D configuration.

Edited November 13, 2024 by Catmansound

[Catmansound]

1 hour ago, E|FA said:

You can also Ungroup the Stair object to explode it into editable parts.

then you lose the feature rich options for reconfiguring stairs as the design evolves and you need to reconfigure stairs, which happens quite a lot when you're in design mode.

[zoomer]

I welcome that at least a tread's overhang is possible.

 

But I would have needed a 4 cm tread overhang AND

a 2 cm riser covering overhead ....

 

(And a clean geometry for exports BTW)

[E|FA]

1 hour ago, Catmansound said:

3 hours ago, E|FA said:

You can also Ungroup the Stair object to explode it into editable parts.

then you lose the feature rich options for reconfiguring stairs as the design evolves and you need to reconfigure stairs, which happens quite a lot when you're in design mode.

Agree completely. which is why I voted for the Wishlist item.  I was posting in case you needed an immediate workaround.

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

OK, I missed something here.  Having never used the Stair tool, but know how to design complex stairs, I decided to have a better look at the stair tool.  I think it is a pretty good tool.

But all I had to do to make a bull nose was fillet the edge with the NURBS fillet tool.  Granted I had to pick each one separately, so that took two minutes.  Once I did that it took  it out of hybrid mode, but several undo's or hitting the remove function brought it back to hybrid mode.

 

So, I am assuming the question was, can you incorporate the bull nose within the Hybrid functionality.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[FiSlik]

Googling how to add a bullnose to steps led me here. If it's going to be able to be used seriously as a tool for both 3D visualisation AND for creating construction detailing, it needs to be able to have bull-nosing, mitred and pencil round edges on any side of the tread, as well as a drip channel. (And also LED lighting recessed into it but that's less urgent!)

[line-weight]

On 11/14/2024 at 1:18 PM, VIRTUALENVIRONS said:

OK, I missed something here.  Having never used the Stair tool, but know how to design complex stairs, I decided to have a better look at the stair tool.  I think it is a pretty good tool.

But all I had to do to make a bull nose was fillet the edge with the NURBS fillet tool.  Granted I had to pick each one separately, so that took two minutes.  Once I did that it took  it out of hybrid mode, but several undo's or hitting the remove function brought it back to hybrid mode.

 

So, I am assuming the question was, can you incorporate the bull nose within the Hybrid functionality.

 

Making these kinds of edit completely breaks the stair object as a parametric object. The whole point of the stair object is that it is parametric, so you don't have to remodel the whole thing if your floor-floor dimension changes (for example).

 

Hitting a few undos doesn't "take it back to hybrid mode" - it loses you all the work you've just done.

 

Furthermore, converting it to non-parametric solids doesn't even produce a nice set of solids, it produces a whole load of faces which are a pain to edit and look awful in section.

 

 

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

3 minutes ago, line-weight said:

Hitting a few undos doesn't "take it back to hybrid mode"

@line-weight  It takes it back for me.  Using 2025.    I just tested it, extruded out few faces, rounded them, did a few undo's and back to hybrid mode.

 

But, I don't know this tool, so I will defer to you or anyone else on this issue.  Having said that, I think it is a really fantastic tool especially for Decks/Docks.

 

[Jeff Prince]

It’s amusing to me that anyone thinks the stairs generated with the built in stair tool is worthy of focusing on in a rendering 😉 

 

It makes good basic stairs to suit a variety of BIM needs. It makes stairs that are passible for most rendering context where stairs are not the stars.    But if you want high levels of detail, you just have to model it manually.  That is the case for many things in Vectorworks.  Use the parametric tools to roughly model something and use for documentation, use a deconstructed copy to embellish for your renderings.  And use 2D details to document the nuances of the design.  That’s the promise of BIM right, replicate our old CAD ways 😉

[Catmansound]

Hmmm.. Jeff, you have a point, but going forward I think that the evolution of parametric modeling for BIM purposes and the world of 3D rendering are slowly melding. Us "older" CAD users have seen an exponential growth over recent years. Up until recently, parametric modeling has been pretty basic as you said, but with the advent of Red Shift, 5D, Enscape, V-Ray, etc. as stand alone and plugins, we're seeing a progression where 3D rending is just a phase of design process before we get to construction documents. Because of this powerful connectivity, I've recently began modeling and rendering simultaneously during the design process, even though parametric tools might still be in basic mode, it's amazing how much you can do with them in rendering mode to convey an idea. Soon we'll be doing it all, all at once with AI.

[Jeff Prince]

29 minutes ago, Catmansound said:

Hmmm.. Jeff, you have a point, but going forward I think that the evolution of parametric modeling for BIM purposes and the world of 3D rendering are slowly melding. Us "older" CAD users have seen an exponential growth over recent years. Up until recently, parametric modeling has been pretty basic as you said, but with the advent of Red Shift, 5D, Enscape, V-Ray, etc. as stand alone and plugins, we're seeing a progression where 3D rending is just a phase of design process before we get to construction documents. Because of this powerful connectivity, I've recently began modeling and rendering simultaneously during the design process, even though parametric tools might still be in basic mode, it's amazing how much you can do with them in rendering mode to convey an idea. Soon we'll be doing it all, all at once with AI.

I was being sarcastic, hence the prolific use of 🙂s

 

There are other programs you can use to make really nice stairs that do the BIM and rendering easily, it’s just not VWX at the moment.

[Catmansound]

Of course, but it does make for good discourse 😊anyway, I didn’t even think about third party programs, good suggestion, thanks.

[Pat Stanford]

1 hour ago, VIRTUALENVIRONS said:

It takes it back for me.  Using 2025.    I just tested it, extruded out few faces, rounded them, did a few undo's and back to hybrid mode.

Yes, it will take you back. IF you use undo as soon as you have accomplished the task.

 

But there is no way to do this, then draw for another hour, then decide you need the stair back to a hybrid without losing everything you drew after.

[BartH]

Maybe, to get back to OP's Wishlist item we could say:

 

Can we add to the parametric stair tool's "treads", similar edge profiling as the new countertop tool? 

 

 

[E|FA]

4 minutes ago, BartH said:

 

Maybe, to get back to OP's Wishlist item we could say:

 

Can we add to the parametric stair tool's "treads", similar edge profiling as the new countertop tool? 

 

 

I agree, and suggest people vote this item up (arrow at top left of this web page).