Stairs 12.5.1

[vsd]

Stairs improved much from the previous version, but:

Arrows extensions:

Scaling layers messes up the arrows such in a way that the only solution is to disable arrows all together:

arrow lines extend outside the bounding of the stairs, proportional with layer scaling.

Negative angles on winders:

Negative angles in winders lead to destructive mishaping of the stair. For example the library item "Double winder-s", found in 14-Stairs or 24-Stairs, is badly deformed after regeneration.

Custom text size:

Text size of stair's data is not settable any longer. Other text properties seem not to be affected.

I hope that by the next update, which is bound immediately, these problems had been addressed. At the current moment all stairs have to be reset to no arrows. This is not a big deal. But it makes a hell of a job doing the arrows by hand. Because arrows must be.

Wish item:

It would be great if stair breaks would allow the option of a dashed contour of the remaining stair object. Just a rectangle of the bounding box of the cut stair segment, for example, or the stair complete but dashed after the stair break (which BTW is so improved!). As it is now the arrow protrudes into the nothing. It looks weird.

Thank you

vsd

Edited January 22, 2007 by vsd

[Christiaan]

Arrows extensions:

Scaling layers messes up the arrows such in a way that the only solution is to disable arrows all together:

arrow lines extend outside the bounding of the stairs, proportional with layer scaling.

Yeah, it appears that the arrow attributes do not take on the new scale. One workaround I noticed (which would be drawing manually) is to go into General Settings tab and then edit the End and Start Markers to suit (the units are incorrect but you'll be able to get them looking right).

[vsd]

It doesn't work for me. Moreover, If I might express a further wish item, I'd rather have the arrows as circles or lines. Thus no scaling problems whatsoever.

But -oh man- am I happy that now it is possible to set the arrow endings!

I'm currently on a building with 5 staircases. I need them to work properly.

vsd

[Christiaan]

Are you sure you went to the Stair Settings (select stair object, then click on Settings in Object Info palette). Then click on the General tab. Then, under "2D Detail" click on the pulldown menus for End Marker and Start Marker, clicking on Edit, and then change the Length figure to suit. Here too you can change whether it's an arrow, circle or line too.

[vsd]

I change them batch with a record manager of mine. But Record Editor does that too. It doesn't help in the least the wrong lines of the arrows.

Concretely: setting arrows means creating 2 fake lines on the pio obj. These lines have the only purpose to create end and start markers and they are supposed to be very small, almost 0 in length, just long enough for displaying an arrow head. They are NOT related with the line turning around the stair.

These lines suddenly get caught in the general layer scaling routine. Just a little fix and the problem is gone.

[jnr]

So as best I can tell,and unless I'm missing something, the stair tool has still not been run past an architect. A flight of stairs on one floor with an up arrow, still displays with an up arrow on the floor above it (supposed to be down). Furthermore if you are drawing this by hand the arrow of direction would stop at a cut line, not extend beyond. It seems the arrow capability, regardless of marker settings, is currently useless.

[Don@Black Dog]

I find the stair data (i.e., up and down has reverted to a tiny font size. any way to reset it?

Also, Christiaan, it seems the edit function you mention only affects the marker size, not the length of line, which would indeed be helpful, as would the data reverting to Down at the top of the stairs as vsd mentioned.

Give us concrete and steel stair capability and we are almost there!