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Stair Tool


Jim Smith

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1 minute ago, rDesign said:

:(

 

In comparison to that ArchiCAD Stair tool demo video, Vw's Stail Tool functionality & UI / UX is entirely lacking. 

 

In reality, it just does not work well enough to use at all.  I have been burned too many times... painstakingly setting up the stairs - with their above and below cutline settings - only to open up the document and have them all disappeared and replaced with some error message.  
Now the only think I feel comfortable using them for is to help generate the geometry, then I explode them - and draw the stairs 2D for the plans - and then old school model them for the 3D.  

 

If 2018 only had 1 thing - I would want a ground up new stair tool.

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On 2017-05-24 at 10:37 AM, Tom Klaber said:

If 2018 only had 1 thing - I would want a ground up new stair tool.

 

YES PLEASE!

 

& I'm 100% with Zoomer here:

On 2017-05-24 at 8:53 AM, zoomer said:

 

Probably not the only Tool.

 

I think I avoid to load the demo this year to to avoid any frustration.

 

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Also really struggling with this tool!

 

For instance - I should be able to put a half landing or landing wherever the hell I want! i.e. 'I want a half landing of x mm between risers 12 and 13'.

 

At the moment, I have to pick between having a half landing on the straight flight ~or~ having a half landing as the stair turns near the top of the flight. But in this particular setup I need both. The tool is far too restrictive at the moment!

Edited by Asemblance
Clarity
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8 hours ago, Alan Woodwell said:

If I get the message and not the stair I know I have stuffed up my settings, either wrong level or storey, I am an idiot sometimes.

The thing is that the stair will spontaneous collapse.  It will be fine - then I will move it into place - and somehow that plan shift will kill it.   Or the only thing I will change is the 2D cut settings - and that will kill it.  Or adding a new stair object will kill the old one.

 

The settings issues are frustrating, but there is a fundamental instability underneath that is worse.

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4 hours ago, Asemblance said:

Also really struggling with this tool!

 

For instance - I should be able to put a half landing or landing wherever the hell I want! i.e. 'I want a half landing of x mm between risers 12 and 13'.

 

At the moment, I have to pick between having a half landing on the straight flight ~or~ having a half landing as the stair turns near the top of the flight. But in this particular setup I need both. The tool is far too restrictive at the moment!

Yes.  

We need more than a 'fix' - the whole philosophy around the current stair tool is not quite right.  

They replaced the old stair tool with one with more numerical input boxes - which was actually a step in the wrong direction.  The tool as it stands can not be fixed or tweaked - it needs a ground up rethink.

 

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On 5/24/2017 at 8:33 AM, Tom Klaber said:

ArchiCAD demoed a really nice stable looking stair tool.  I was watching the video - and in my head was screaming "No - you can't do that - your stair will explode, die, or cause the file to crash...." then I realized they had a better stair tool than we do....

 

 

This is also a nice example of the Heads Up contextual command menu.  Notice how relevant tools are offered right by the mouse when a line is clicked.  

 

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19 minutes ago, Tom Klaber said:

Yes.  

We need more than a 'fix' - the whole philosophy around the current stair tool is not quite right.  

They replaced the old stair tool with one with more numerical input boxes - which was actually a step in the wrong direction.  The tool as it stands can not be fixed or tweaked - it needs a ground up rethink.

 

 

^^^^ I couldn't agree more. ^^^^^

 

After seeing that ArchiCAD stair, and looking back at the Vw Stair, I'm worried that the Vectorworks 'dialogue box happy' mentality would not produce something as apparently easy-to-use (and powerful) as the ArchiCAD stair. :(

 

IMO the only real improvement in the current Vw Stair tool over the legacy Custom Stair is that it is 'slightly' more stable. The guard rail capabilities are a little better, but they are very confusing. When changing the Stair rise, I have to strategically think about how to change the height so I don't get the 'Not an Integer' error message. Extremely frustrating...

 

The current Stair is not good by any measure, yet I'm worried that we're stuck with it.

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28 minutes ago, Andy Broomell said:

 

I love both of these things equally (unlike the Stair tool).

I was thinking about that myself.  I like both and I was trying to think of something that was abhorrent to me (food wise) but nothing came to mind in that moment so I left it.

All kidding aside.  The stair tool simply falls way short especially on what we now see is possible.

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3 hours ago, Markvl said:

I was thinking about that myself.  I like both and I was trying to think of something that was abhorrent to me (food wise) but nothing came to mind in that moment so I left it.

All kidding aside.  The stair tool simply falls way short especially on what we now see is possible.

 

Cheezies & Gum 

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Just now, jnr said:

 I don't want a tread and riser on the landing. Alas, this tool won't do that but the old custom stair tool did...

Screen Shot 2017-09-28 at 10.33.21 AM.png

 

I think that is why it was kept around as the Custom Stair tool - because the new one just does not do so many relatively standard configurations.  As I am warmed to the new tool - simply because it is more stable - I get frustrated by its lack to do things like... end on a landing.

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The old (more flexible) custom stair tool is unstable in the current versions, so game over. I've had way too many recent projects corrupted and now have to bang my head against the wall with the inflexible current tool: crappy graphics, bad interface, 37 different places to control one variable, buried sub menus, mind bending options (am I on run 1 or run 2? wait is that from the bottom or the top? Wait, I had to mirror the stair, so now where do I control that offset?). 

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Here's another one. This took about two days, a ton of trial and error, and generous support of folks on these boards.  But wait, it appears the Archicad interface could do this in 5-10 minutes. If a new tool is designed for stairs, its not a big leap to create the same interface for ramps which would be of enourmous benefit to Landscape and Scene Designers.

Screen Shot 2017-09-28 at 10.56.37 AM.png

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On 5/23/2017 at 9:01 PM, rDesign said:

I very strongly feel that any tool that replaces an older legacy tool should have the same basic functionality as the tool it is replacingand it must not take away functionality as we currently have with the Stair tool (and also the Strucutral Members).

 

I know it is probably too late to hope that the Stair tool situation will be remedied in Vw2018, but how many version upgrades will it take? What version was the Stair tool introduced?

This is my big frustration with the stair tool, I need it to fit at a certain height with intermediate platforms. Having create single stairs and modeled platforms is nice for one stair, but not for dozens (or multiple dozens) of stairs. Not to mention if they all have to be updated. (Yes using symbols is an option for some stairs, but not when you have quite a few different heights to match)

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16 hours ago, jnr said:

Here's another one. This took about two days, a ton of trial and error, and generous support of folks on these boards.  But wait, it appears the Archicad interface could do this in 5-10 minutes. If a new tool is designed for stairs, its not a big leap to create the same interface for ramps which would be of enourmous benefit to Landscape and Scene Designers.

Screen Shot 2017-09-28 at 10.56.37 AM.png

Even though I usually don't need that kind of stairs, but ramps sometimes.... this ArchiCAD style stair tool is what I really would love to have in Vectorworks.


Maybe start a petition that a new stair tool like ArchiCAD's is the only "new" tool to be added in VW2019 plus fixes/reworkings on the other tools (e.g. reshape tool, road tools etc).?

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I'm bumping this because I just spent 30 minutes wrestling with the stair tool trying to move risers from one leg of a stair to the other (trying to equalize the number of treads above and below a landing).

 

If there was some way to stop the tool from recalculating after every change, so you could make a couple of changes that would still result in a working stair, that would be a huge start.  50+% of the time, my fights with the stair tool revolve around trying to get a certain number of treads in the right places.  I try to adjust one set of treads, and I get yelled at by the tool.  But if it would just shut the hell up for 30s, I'd be making a second change that allows a functional stair.

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