topic Re: Cannot create 360° spiral staircase in Modeling

Cannot create 360° spiral staircase

eidam655 — Fri, 06 Jun 2025 20:25:14 GMT

Hi!
I am trying to create a spiral staircase that ends on the same line as it begins (so a full 360° circle).

However, even though my Archicad draws the preview successfully, it doesn't create any geometry.

Is there no way of doing this as one object? Does Archicad read the same start and end vertex as overlapping?

Thanks for any answers!

Operating system used: Windows 11 24H2

Betreff: Cannot create 360° spiral staircase

runxel — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 15:08:24 GMT

You'll probably need to fake it, being 359,99°.

Betreff: Cannot create 360° spiral staircase

eidam655 — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 07:36:23 GMT

it's crazy to me that architecture should suffer from a software limitation

Betreff: Cannot create 360° spiral staircase

cuba — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 09:07:12 GMT

There are some library objects for spiral stairs..

https://bimcomponents.com/GSM/Details/16542

Re: Cannot create 360° spiral staircase

danielk — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 10:43:47 GMT

Yeah, this has always been a limitation: the stair tool geometry simply cannot overlap itself in plan. That is just how it was designed. 😕

But Architecture doesn't need to suffer for it, only the Architect. Here is how to do it (you practically have to use 2 stairs):
https://support.graphisoft.com/hc/en-us/articles/27687009124881-How-to-create-spiral-Stairs

But like @runxel suggested, I would also just make it 359.99 degrees. You will not see the difference really.

Re: Cannot create 360° spiral staircase

jl_lt — Tue, 10 Jun 2025 00:50:59 GMT

and boy, does he suffereth, that is, the architect

Re: Cannot create 360° spiral staircase

ryejuan — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 02:25:11 GMT

surprisingly I thought I won't be doing any spiral staircase but to my surprise here I am and realized that the latest and greatest Archicad 29 got limitations to this compare to the staircase in lower versions that offer spiral staircase... kinda funny...

Re: Cannot create 360° spiral staircase

jl_lt — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 02:34:59 GMT

if by funny you mean your hand pressing on your forehead in disbelief to the point of stress fracture, while mechanically damaging your mouse, then yes, its very funny

Re: Cannot create 360° spiral staircase

ryejuan — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 14:05:26 GMT

Yeah! been delaying of doing that staircase since yesterday... Now sat on it and see my options...

1. trying to resolve the issue with the new staircase (which I find it impossible to work with unless someone more knowledgeable enlighten me how it be done.)

2. model it one by one step by step which I find it more wasting time.

3. go to objects library type spiral staircase. Luckily got older versions of it that works and I end up using that one...

I just want the stair tool to do 3250 height but it won't allow me while

on the older spiral staircase which is now a library object it just simply did what I want. Save me a lot of time like less than 5mins to do vs fiddling around on the new stair tool to get what you want. Hopefully newer releases will have more simplified and intuitive way of doing things ( I doubt about that it will happen any sooner...)

Re: Cannot create 360° spiral staircase

jl_lt — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 03:26:17 GMT

been there too. the stair object in A20 worked really well for some not so complicated cases

Re: Cannot create 360° spiral staircase

Erwin Edel — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 07:55:30 GMT

It also managed to draw coherent stringers instead of fragmented twisted up polygons pretending to be a stringer.

Re: Cannot create 360° spiral staircase

Lingwisyer — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 09:05:48 GMT

I moved the stair objects and rail objects from pre-AC21 to an external library as soon as many of the limitations came to light. Rarely use them, but it's nice to have.