Stair Tool

[djb]

Do you think the next time you're working on the stair tool you can add angles to landings and rounded first treads of different widths. Kind of like all stairs are actually made.

Thanks

[PVA - Admin]

What specific kind of angles in landings are you trying to add that you cannot?

Submitting a wish now for a separately controllable bottom tread. Currently Custom Stair can configure the bottom tread by just adding a flight of one tread to the end and its width is independent of the rest of the treads, but it cannot be curved that I can see as you requested.

A cursory google search resulted in the following examples of this kind of curvature (in addition to a variable curve along the entire stair objects as shown in some of these, which ive gone ahead and done as yet another request) which I have included in my writeup of this wish:

Edited January 17, 2014 by JimW

[djb]

Hi Jim,

Thanks for responding. What I'm asking for with respect to landings, the "new" stair tool has no option to provide an angles landing, much like the custom stair tool. Because of this I rarely use the "new" stair tool, among many other limitations. the bottom tread shape is big, most residential stair in the US have a bullnose first tread and in high end housing fountain stairs are common. The reason I asked is there is a fancy stair tool and it becomes unusable because of limitations. Also stair landings are odd shaped apart from the standard rectangle with 45 degree angles and multiple landings as well.

I know the custom stair tool is there for this but if you have a tool I'd like to use it, you know?

Thanks again for your interest in my post. Just trying to give you guys a little boost to get your program moving in the right direction.

[PVA - Admin]

I know there are technical reasons in the background for us maintaining two (actually 3, if you count Simple Stair) separate Stair tools, but you're right. such a standard construction should be achievable with both.

I'm going to see if there are grand plans for combining the tools or creating a completely new one that incorporates all the abilities of each. If not, i'll make the appropriate requests.

Edited January 27, 2014 by JimW

[bc]

Well, Jim, you've certainly piqued my curiosity as to what the "technical reasons" might be and I greatly hope to hear of some grand plans as well. Right now I just used the stair tool as and aid to modeling the stairs myself. The stairs I use are usually not as complicated as the stair tool itself and modeling them results in more relevant components.

[PVA - Admin]

The current "Stair" tool I believe started out in life as a 3rd party plugin, possibly from one of our distributor's localized versions (I forget the details). It was then included with the core version of Vectorworks a few versions back. It had some features that the Custom Stair tool did not have, but since it lacked the ability to create certain geometry that the Custom Stair tool had (ie the original post in this thread), they decided to keep both rather than spend time trying to combine the complex interfaces of both.

"Simple Stair" is mainly for giving Fundamentals the ability to create stairs, but reserving the more powerful tools for the Design series modules. Similar to the simplified Door and Window objects that Fundamentals-only licenses have.

Not arguing for or against that decision in this post, just giving the background that led us to the 3 stair tools we have today.

Edited January 27, 2014 by JimW

[billtheia]

I, too, would love to have these abilities added to the VW stair tool.

Ideally, the two stair tools need to be merged into a single tool that (for me) is capable of creating and displaying stairs in a US standards compliant format. It would be great if we could take the ability to add & subtract stair components (runs, landings, etc.) of the "custom stair" and add the display controls of the "stair object." It kills me that we can't create a stair object with one run of stairs and one landing (at the top.)

I know that it's been said before but the ArchiCAD and Revit stair and railing tools kick VW's stair tool's butt. Look there for inspiration.