StairBuilder - straight-run, winder, landing, straight run

[Aaron Bourgoin]

I am trying to configure a StairBuilder stair type and have hit the wall many of you have in the past from trying to find an answer in the threads.

It's a combination of straight-run to a 30-30-30 winder, connected to a landing and concluded with another straight run of stairs. I've read the documentation and tried and tried to configure the stairbuilder stair for this and have gotten to the point where I think one parameter (maybe two) requires a value who's logic defies me. I also don't understand what the gray, winder selection part of the tool actually does.

If anyone can help fill in the right value to achieve this (or even explain why it's just not possible! - 🙂 ) I'd be humbled and grateful.

The closest I've come is attached here. Thank you.

[Anonymous]

I'm one who gave up on stairbuilder building a winder stair in V10.
I built it out of roofs for stringers, slab for treads, and walls for risers which I'm sure you know about.
However I loaded your gsm stair and don't know if this has any thing to do with the trouble your having, but I measured the narrow side of the stair and got 2 1/4", surly not a stair that would be considered a legal or safe stair here in Calif.
Could that be something stairmaker is fighting?
lec

[Aaron Bourgoin]

The stair is legal in this jurisdiction. What I don't know is how the walking line and the offset parameters need to be to get three equal winders in 90 degrees.

I contacted Graphisoft Tech Support with this question/problem. They told me it was not a support issue, but rather a high level training issue. I've got seventeen years experience with the application. Perhaps God is the next person I need to consult.

🙂

[Karl Ottenstein]

...and perhaps ask Him to inspire a bunch of GS employees to wake up one morning with the sole thought: "I'm going to work on a better stair tool today!"

[Anonymous]

Aaron wrote:
The stair is legal in this jurisdiction.
:-)

It was of course just a wild guess on my account, sorry.

My experience (although light years less than yous) was that when I was trying to make it build a winder stair, was that it would tell me I had an illegal stair when I knew it would work and be perfectly legal.
And then as an insult to injury, it would say a stair that had some ridiculous silly dimensions, was legal!
I gave up, as I previously lamented.
Here's hoping Karl has had a prophetic vision of some day soon:-)

[Erich]

lec1212 wrote:
...when I was trying to make it build a winder stair, was that it would tell me I had an illegal stair when I knew it would work and be perfectly legal...

Of course, there is also the issue that some of us work on older houses that were built prior to any rules governing stair construction. These old homes are often cobbled together to create something that works for the conditions they have and often this means stringers that are reduced in size, cut, missing altogether, notched treads, risers, etc. All conditions that will choke the stair tools in AC.

Rather than even attempting to make a tool to do all stairs, give us a few flexible objects that can handle the various conditions we face. For instance, if you had an object that could represent a simple straight stair run and one that could deal with a curve, and if each of these objects were flexible enough so that they could go adjacent to one another with out extra lines showing up in plan or elevation or section, then we could handle most conditions.

If you added a landing or single tread object that had a flexible shape in plan (i.e. it could work for a winder with five sides or more) and was also flexible in where risers occurred, that would take care of 98% of everything out there.

In my limited time, I have done some of this already for my own use. How hard can it be for GS to do so when it is their day job?

[Aaron Bourgoin]

more work on this stair configuration yields something a bit closer to the desired result. in the end I want a stair with a total width equal to 2x the stair width plus 3 1/2" between them, 3 winders @ 30 degrees = stair width (3'-4" x3'-4") and a stair offset of 3 1/2" up at the winder landing area.

Do the latest stair settings resonate with anyone looking at this thread?

[Aaron Bourgoin]

and a copy of the stair part itself.