Stair Tool Rehab for 2050

[bc]

EDIT:  Just thought I'd bump this and put a more realistic time frame on the title.....

 

 

Kudos to those responsible for the current VW iteration.

I would like to request the following feature for 2020 or later.  It's huge, I know, but overdue.

We need a stair tool (and railing tool) that approaches this:

Go here to see what archiCAD has:

 

http://www.graphisoft.com/archicad/

 

Scroll down to the Archicad 21 Premier Event video and begin at about minute 18 to see a 20 min presentation on what a stair tool should do.

Thank you for your consideration of this matter.

We need a no-nonsense comprehensive stair tool please.

Edited September 10, 2019 by bc

[PVA - Admin]

 

[jnr]

Zoomer:  And unfortunately the railing/fence tool is equally irriating, slow, and prone to crashing. Its as tedious as the stair tool.  The custom stair tool (fomerly known as just the "stair tool") while limited, was infintely more user friendly, quicker, and customizable.

[bc]

Please note my new more realistic title for this post.

[jnr]

Ha. 30 years is probably optimistic....

[bpsabatier]

The set designers must be ecstatic.... architects not so much.

 

Disappointed for another year.  Not sure how much longer I can take this...

[line-weight]

By 2050 perhaps we will be teleporting between storeys and stairs will have become redundant. So VW are in fact ahead of the game.

[mac@stairworks]

20 years this year and still waiting.

I just hope that if there is ever a new stair tool, yes a new one, not a bunch of band-aids on the old one, it will be amazing.

 

 

Edited September 11, 2019 by mac@stairworks

[zeno]

11 hours ago, bc said:

Please note my new more realistic title for this post.

 

OMG how can i add another UP on this thread?

[willofmaine]

Scroll all the way to the top of the page & click on the triangle that's at the far left...

[Ross Harris]

Feature request.... allow to vote more than once!

[Christiaan]

Still need 18 votes to even catch up with the the top request of "no new features" 🤣

[JMR]

No stair tool rehab in sight...or have I missed something?

[JMR]

I'll just leave this here...  🙄

 

[Ross Harris]

Safe to say nope. Looking at the road map, you can count the things on there on one hand that relate to architecture. It's mostly Spotlight followed by landmark features.

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

Although it is Vectorworks prerogative to put its support on Hybrid tools as they are very successful, there comes a time when the other tools take up the slack.   Primarily NURBS tools.  Extremely complex Staircase designs become possible.

 

Below is a more simple standard.example of modelling a circular staircase with bullnose in about 3 minutes.

 

 

[JMR]

An architect's practice has a bit different angle at stairs...parametrics, editability, reporting, IFC...to name a few. If not for those I would do everything in Rhino...

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

53 minutes ago, JMR said:

If not for those I would do everything in Rhino...

What about this one?  My Rhino friends had a tough time with this one.  

 

This one has a very high degree of parametric's, but obviously not completely.  But, all done in Vectorworks.  Having said that, keeping the curve structures separate made it easier to modify.  Poor man's parametric.

 

 

 

[Jeff Prince]

4 minutes ago, VIRTUALENVIRONS said:

My Rhino friends had a tough time with this one.

 

You must be friends with rhinos in the zoo and not actual modelers who use Rhino 🙂.

 

That railing is easily made as a true parametric structure in Rhino with the simple repeating pattern.  It's really just a staircase composed of 4 main components, if you ignore the modeling errors such as the ones depicted in the image.

 

 

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

HI Jeff,

Made this in one day for a friend, so there are errors.  It was for animation.  I fixed the errors after making the movie.....Parametric. 

But, it is not a repeating pattern.   The patterns bend on the curves.  Through my Rhino friends for a "curve", no pun intended.

[Jeff Prince]

2 minutes ago, VIRTUALENVIRONS said:

But, it is not a repeating pattern.

 

It sure looks like a simple repeating pattern to my eye.  In a truly parametric system, the pattern bends with the curve.  If the curve changes, the pattern rebuilds.  If the pattern is redesigned the overall layout along the curve reshapes.  There are many examples of this type of behavior in Rhino's Grasshopper.  I would hope something similar could be fashioned in Marionette.

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

The pattern bends with the curve.  It is to some degree parametric, but more in how I developed it.  It is not VW's parametric, but "poor man's parametric".😀

 

You might not believe this, but I made a tutorial on this for some NURBS users.  You can find it still.

 

But, you know, no Grasshopper, Marionette, etc, just plain old NURBS tools.

 

 

 

 

[rDesign]

@VIRTUALENVIRONS as impressive as your NURBS stair examples are (clearly you have skills I do not), they are kind of off-topic as they aren’t addressing the original wishlist request in this thread to improve the current parametric Stair PIO Tool.
 

Yes, one can direct model anything using NURBS, and with time become proficient in it, but when it comes time for design revisions, code compliance, takeoffs, construction details / documentation, etc — direct modeling is not the most efficient use of one’s time.

 

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

10 minutes ago, rDesign said:

direct modeling is not the most efficient use of one’s time.

Yes, that is a true statement compared to hybrid tools.  That is Vectorworks bread and butter. 

 

But, hybrid tools can only produce a certain level of design.  To be kind, advanced intermediate.  I will always remember when this was pointed out to me and it stunned me when I realized it.  In order to produce advanced intermediate work, you had to be an advanced expert in Vectorworks Hybrid tools.

 

To produce "Zaha Hadid Architects" designs,  you need NURBS tools.  I don't see it as a question  between Hybrid or NURBS, but more of a progression.

 

Architecture is only a small part of the 3D world.

As I always point out, I am not an Architect, Landscape designer, or anything of note,  But, below is one of the most complex Landscapes you will ever see.  This is Vimy Ridge, a WW1 battlefield I was contracted to reconstruct for its 100 year commemoration in 2017.  Five square miles of battlefield and 120 miles of trenching.  The topology was made in Vectorworks, sent to C4D where the trenches were sculpted out.  Everything else except figures was modelled in VW's NURBS.

 

 

 

 

 

[line-weight]

13 hours ago, VIRTUALENVIRONS said:

To produce "Zaha Hadid Architects" designs,  you need NURBS tools.  I don't see it as a question  between Hybrid or NURBS, but more of a progression.

 

To produce "Zaha Hadid" designs you need an enormous budget to pay for all of the bespoke modelling.

 

But even ZH buildings contain many mundane and repetitive elements that are best modelled parametrically. That includes stairs. I am sure you'll find that any ZH building contains a mixture of very bespoke stairs, and rather mundane ones used back of house and for fire exits, etc.

 

The current VW stair tool doesn't really cope well even with those more mundane stairs, but it should do. That's what this thread is about. Anything that can't realistically be generated parametrically is off subject for this thread.

 

It's not about "level of design" - it's about efficient drawing practices in the real world.

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

28 minutes ago, line-weight said:

It's not about "level of design" - it's about efficient drawing practices in the real world.

This is what Zaha Hadid Architects use.

 

Today, the company’s workflow consists of Maya, then Rhino with Grasshopper, according to Marko. 3ds Max is used occasionally for renders, while Autocad, Revit and Catia help with the more pragmatic aspects of construction planning.

For architectural rendering, Zaha Hadid mainly uses V-Ray for Maya, Rhino and 3ds Max.

 

There is no way to tie this all together in a bow.  These people have something you can't teach or buy.  Skill, talent, knowledge, etc., the intangibles.   When you move outside of the comfort zone that Vectorworks provides for its user base, then you are in the real world.

 

Fortunately for most, they never will.  The real world is brutal.