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2010 Stair Visibility


rb-arch

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Thank you for your reply.

Kind of disappointing actually. You finally get amazing options to make great stairs, and it lets you down with simple 2D graphics. What good is it showing up on 1 floor?

The fact that a stair would show on the floor that it is linked to above, was one of the few menu items in the 2009 version that wasn't cumbersome.

I guess I will copy the stair to the next floor, then move it down 9' and strip it of the all the 2D graphics - clumsy.

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Here's an old trick that should still work: duplicate the stair from one layer to the other, then move it up/down by the layer to layer ("Z") difference. This gives you the stair on both levels, and the ability to set different stair break options for each floor (up or down), also, because the stairs will exactly coincide in 3d space the model and sections will still be accurate. The only downside is that changes to the stair require re-duplication.

Another way to do it is to have the layer below visible and use a floor object with a stair well cut out of it to mask everything except the stair. Very anatomically accurate and fairly easy to do.

There are always problems and always solutions. You just gotta think like the software a little ;-)

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Shaun, Shaun,

don't let the world be black on you!

Personally I very seldom used the "link-to-layer" feature of the old stair: if you work on large projects you'll have one file for each floor and compose your model in references elsewhere.

That feature -a good one, no doubt- is only useful if you have very small projects and with two floors. Anything else is simply a disturbance.

I was compelled to un-group stairs to have the display of lower floors on the upper one, since most of the times the stair won't be regularly rising across the building, in our projects.

With the new stair you can split 2D from 3D, thus the display of the lower stair on the upper floor will be precisely done according to your needs. Not displaying in 3D if you don't need it.

I added now an image of a model with one building, which is spite of being rather small, is much better off without layer height binding of the stair.

orso

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If all of this is true, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be disappointed in the "new" stair tool. I do many projects with two and three floors and found the layer-linking functionality to be very BIM-like - draw ONE stair and view it differently from floor to floor. The graphics and railing options left me wanting, though.

It sounds like NNA has now given us a stair that has good graphics but requires a NON-BIM-like workaround for viewing between floors.

Two half-solutions.

I hope that I'm wrong.

I'll see when my copy of VW2010 arrives.

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NNA just isn't thinking straight. They're always doing the job HALF way and DON'T listen to suggestions.

The dual floor view was great because one could draw ONE stair and it reflected on 2 floors. ALL NNA needed to do was take it a step further and come up with a plan to still draw ONE stair BUT reflect on more than 2 floors.

This is where vw is weak. It cannot do things automatically. If the ground floor has a wall that is higher than the third floor, vw isn't intelligent to automatically reflect that wall on other floors. If there's a flat roof over the Ground floor, vw isn't intelligent to automatically reflect it dashed in the floor above. If there is a roof above, vw isn't intelligent to automatically reflect it dotted on the floor below. Users have to constantly come up with work-arounds. I'm tired of work-arounds. Why can't it be like ArchiCAD?

This is the whole point of BIM. It should be ONE building model therefore ONE staircase. Then the program should be able to determine the floor plans based on the individual floors. That's why lot's of people don't accept vw as being a BIM tool because it only has HALF tools.

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You can use the simple stair or the custom stair (the old stair), as Jonathan already told you.

Nobody compels you to use the new one, if you don't want to.

So you aren't losing anything, you are being given more.

Whereby this new stair is advanced and not for the simple project, for that is absolutely overkill.

Not all architects have projects with two-three floors. And some architects needed an enhanced tool for their work.

We didn't have it. We have it now.

Please be so kind to try to think of other needs than your immediate ones.

I told you already that I didn't use that option because it didn't fit a multiple-file project organization.

If you have the building split into floors, because of its largeness, how do you have the stair project it's 2D part to a floor that's on another file?

orso

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  • 4 weeks later...
You can use the simple stair or the custom stair (the old stair), as Jonathan already told you.

Nobody compels you to use the new one, if you don't want to.

So you aren't losing anything, you are being given more.

.....

Please be so kind to try to think of other needs than your immediate ones...

orso,

the "custom stair" does show upper + lower floor views,

which is very useful for calculating landings, headroom

etc, but doesn't work properly for most other things.

the new stair has lots of new options, but doesn't

show upper + lower floor views...

how can this be clever or better?

escher aside,

what staircase leaves one floor + doesn't

arrive at another floor?

what stair doesn't need to to be shown

in plan on upper + lower floors?

it's not clever or a matter of choice to

have two stair tools that don't do the

job properly, and suggesting that a CAD

system need not properly cater to a building

of more than 2 storeys is ridiculous.

this is a great disappointment + this alone

will probably stop me upgrading

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All I know is that the new stair tool will finally allow us to actually use a stair tool on our projects. The lower/upper level thing is just a huge annoyance when it comes to multi-storey buildings.

Of course I still I have a deep visceral hate of dialogue boxes. Cadimage Tools' Stair Builder is probably the most forward thinking stair tool in this regard.

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Well said, Christiaan!

In my tools, I have dialogs only for very specific uses: access to certain resources (mainly symbols and wall styles) and obscure settings that no-one really needs, but have to be there since I always have to expect the unexpected.

We hatess dialogs! They're bad interface!

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Personally I very seldom used the "link-to-layer" feature of the old stair: if you work on large projects you'll have one file for each floor and compose your model in references elsewhere.

Orso, Orso?

I'm yet to see what the new stair tool does, but, without prejudice, I have great faith in German engineering and am looking forward to using the new stair tool.

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