Stair Tool - Pain Points

[Chickpea]

I'm new to the stair tool. I've been trying to use it in landmark for external steps.

If the tool can only offer basic functionality in terms of two elevations and calculating riser heights and tread depths, please can you add a feature that allows you to calculate a fall across each tread. 

If it could be all singing and dancing, it would be great if you could specify tread make up a bit like a slab, and risers as a wall, so you can put a section through and get the construction...

 

[hmart]

Stairs should allow you to pick from all designated levels, not just "[Story Above]"

Could be separate Selections

Top Bound:

1. Select Story:
2. Select Level:
3. Top Offset:

On mult-level or split level structures, "Story Above" can be quite limiting.

[Diego - Resuelvector]

Just to add someting to the pot... 
This kind flexibility is what we need.

 

[taoist]

Here is a link to 3rd party stair parts using Vectorworks to create.

 

Being a residential home designer/estimator, these parts are just what the doctor ordered.

 

We should already have these.

 

Current limitations of what is given us for options is conceptual at best.

Should have Custom Tab for adding or selecting railing profiles.

 

https://www.newenglandstairworks.com/cad-models/

 

taoist

 

 

[lupin]

There was a lot to read through in this thread!

Did anyone ask for the tool to allow for a 1 tread stair?  This would be great for split level rooms, and a single tread between or at the end of a landing.

[Patrick Fritsch]

Add to your list that it does not makes sense to have the control handles for up/down text on same floor, should be controllable on each respective floor...it's like a guessing game position the upper floors text currently. see attached.

[Art V]

On 9/14/2018 at 9:40 PM, zoomer said:

And of course things like Fire Stairs or Industrial Stairs on Oil Platforms that span

more than one Story, as a single controlled Object would be nice.

This is one of the things I'm missing the most, especially because these structures can have unequal level spacing that needs to be accomodated for. The old custom stair tool did reasonable with eqally spaced levels but none of the stair tools so far can handle unequal level spacing, plus that after some height it just breaks down. E.g. some structures are 40m high or have space restrictions (e.g steep stair needed) and have/need a single stair with multiple landings etc. which is currently really cumbersome to get it right within the requirements that are specified. (i.e. maximum number of treads, maximum rise, minimum/maximum angle etc., levels etc.)

 

It would be really nice if I could define the parameters (run/rise, levels, min/max numbers for treads etc.) and then specify the starting, intermediate and ending levels and the stair tool would then calculate the optimal stair (e.g. after every 12 treads but no less than 5 treads for any flight there should be a landing, or after every x meters up in height there should be a landing etc. to get a more uniform sequence of flights instead of having to go by trial and error and then redo the whole mess when levels change.)

[Art V]

On 11/23/2018 at 1:15 AM, Diego-Resuelvectorworks said:

Just to add someting to the pot... 
This kind flexibility is what we need.

 

I totally agree with this, if it can handle multiple unequal levels as well then this would solve quite a few of my issues with the stair tool.

Edited March 12, 2019 by Art V

[herbieherb]

We also need a way to manipulate the walking line. This is the walking line in Switzerland. It's very different from what the current staircase tool does.

It would also be very nice to have the sound insulation inserts and the plastered bottom view as a separate geometry inside the stair-tool.

This is the level of detail, we draw our stairs:

[zoomer]

I wonder more why you have Solid Appearance of the Flight in Clip View and I have not ?

(Or is that a real Section in Edit Mode ?)

[herbieherb]

It's no Clip-View. It's actually just a normal OpenGL view of the stair i copied into a new file without walls and floors. It's modeled without the stair tool. The red object around the stair is the sound insulation, not the clipped sides of clip-view.

Edited March 13, 2019 by herbieherb

[zoomer]

42 minutes ago, herbieherb said:

It's modeled without the stair tool.

 

 

Got it 🙂

 

I saw the first Isometric,

and the lowest sound dampening looked for me like it would be the most front part,

exceeding the clip box, because being selected 🙂

[Brian H]

This is a great list.  When can we expect to see any improvements with the stair tool?  This tool is the most frustrating feature in VW, no doubt. 

[line-weight]

1 hour ago, Brian H said:

This is a great list.  When can we expect to see any improvements with the stair tool?  This tool is the most frustrating feature in VW, no doubt. 

Around 2025 perhaps.

[TomKen]

Stairs can be very complex items,  I would be happy even if I model my stairs  then tell Vectorworks that this is a stair object and have it show up on the first floor and second floor the same way the stair tool does it now, and have control over how it displays on the first floor and second floor.

[zeno]

Remember this thread, guys. We already need another stair tool...

 

hope to hear some news about this very soon..

[Raja]

Great posts, interesting to see what we are struggling with. This may have already been covered, but one thing that consistently drives me crazy (I have not yet upgraded to 2024, maybe it's fixed??) is the inability to dash the handrails with the rest of the stair. So the stair above or below the cut line basically should always be shown as dashed, yet this is never a default setting, and then when you show the dashed stair below or above cut line, the railing is solid instead of dashed. Making the handrail tool utterly useless.

 

The stair tool has so much promise but at the same time it has both too many and not enough features...

 

 

Edited November 14, 2023 by Raja
doubled comment

[KIT KOLLMEYER]

I'm working on a winder stair with a C-channel stringer. I seem to remember being able to do this with the parametric stair tool at one point, but I just found that the current stair tool doesn't have options for stringer profiles. What's up with that? I really don't want to manually model this stair and adjust when the story levels inevitably change during structural engineering.

 

On 11/6/2018 at 2:47 PM, cberg said:

On my wishlist: 

• Stringers that can use architectural and structural metal shapes/profiles or at least a custom profiles, as it was in the legacy custom stair tool.  Why did the channel stringer option go away in the "improved" stair tool?

 

[zoomer]

Hmmh,

beside that the Stringers and Handrails often get terribly un-precise and crippled

when it gets narrow - although geometrically still totally possible- no there

is no Profile options.

I often have to deal with exterior steel industrial rescue stairs.

You should not even use the square stringers provided by VW Stair Tool to even

snap on it when manually modeling profiled Stringers.

Nor ever "ungroup" VW Stair Tool Geometry and try to repair the geometry for

any attempts to export as proper watertight Solids. Stringers and Handrails

geometries are so bad, there is no way.

(Wholes, overlapping Faces, double Faces, slight inaccuracies, ....)

It doesn't even work with the simplest concrete Stair setup when it gets narrow.

 

I just use the VW Stair treads, those seem to be realistically accurate to snap and

model the rest from scratch. In simple configurations (single flight Stair), handrails

usually work well when manually modeling with the Handrail PIO.