Stair tool nightmares

[Anonymous]

We have endless endless issues with the stair tool. Even drawing the simplest staircase takes hours of fannying around no matter what settings we adjust. I've set up favorites for compliant stairs which work sometimes but not others despite the fact that the arrangement is 100% correct & buildable. I understand that there's a lot of different instances the tool has to meet, but why oh why is it so utterly over complicated??

My current frustration is in trying to draw a simple staircase with winders at each end. There's gallons of room, the minimum tread & riser sizes are the only constraint, yet it just won't work no matter how I draw or constrain it; and sometimes when you select one of the (incorrect) layouts it suggests, the stair fails to place at all! It's getting to the point that it would be quicker to model each individual piece rather than waste time trying to get the stair tool to do something we know works.

Please, please can we get a stair tool that isn't a massive waste of time.

[Anonymous]

Like this for example; why won't it give me the option to have winders at the bottom too??? We're getting sick of telling contractors 'sorry, we actually want the stair to do this but our software won't show it'.

[Barry Kelly]

There is a lot of experimentation to do with stairs to get them right.
I find only one small setting needs to be off and it can seem impossible.

Try these settings (I only have 2 winders, you will want 3).
Because I have set it as a winder stair, I then just place the stair with 4 clicks and baseline inside the winders - no need to worry about the pet palette options for flights and winders.
Just make sure that you leave the last 4 treads for the 3rd click.
If you go past the forth last tread for the final turn then you are not leaving enough treads for the stair to work (3 winders + one tread to the side).

Barry.

[Anonymous]

Hi Barry,

Thank you for your reply. I do have the settings as per your post however it still refuses to work in many instances. We also very often have scenarios where the first & last tread are the first & last winder as per the attached which the stair tool seems to think is impossible... are you able to shed any light on getting this result?

Many thanks!

[Anonymous]

Yet another issue is the landing type options palette, which just refuses point blank to change the corner landing to winders in a scenario where there is no reason why it shouldn't work. We're wasting hours and hours on this bloody tool, and the only thing I can say to everyone in the office is 'just keep messing with it and see if it works' which is just a joke.

I understand it's a complex problem but this isn't the right solution. it's a massive frustration & a total waste of our time and money at the moment, with seemingly no solution other than reverting back to modelling the stair with slabs etc.

[Erwin Edel]

That type of stair was already a pain with stairmaker, but at least we could get it to somewhat work. I'm dreading starting up a basic residential project now

[DGSketcher]

PrendosJoe wrote:
We also very often have scenarios where the first & last tread are the first & last winder as per the attached which the stair tool seems to think is impossible... are you able to shed any light on getting this result?

Same problem here in the UK with the push for compact stairs. You did mention favourites, which suggests a degree of repetition. If the stair tool isn't working for you then provided the stairs remain constant, then modelling them and converting them to a component may be the better option and quicker. They might also look more like what the joiner needs to produce.

[Daniel Kovacs]

PrendosJoe wrote:
Hi Barry,

Thank you for your reply. I do have the settings as per your post however it still refuses to work in many instances. We also very often have scenarios where the first & last tread are the first & last winder as per the attached which the stair tool seems to think is impossible... are you able to shed any light on getting this result?

Many thanks!

Hello PrendosJoe,

The stair in the picture though very typical, it is not possible to do in ARCHICAD 21. This is a serious usability problem, so we changed our algorithms for ARCHICAD 22 a bit, and so now it is possible in that version (see attached picture). Unfortunately this change can't be moved back to 21.

If you indeed have several other typical situations where you couldn't solve the stair with the new stair tool, I would really appreciate if you could send me some files/pictures about those situations so that we can test those out, and see if it is possible, or if there is a bug stopping you.

Thanks in Advance,

[Barry Kelly]

Yes, version 22 is better than 21 for this type of stair.
But there is a trick in 21.
Set the flight width a very small fraction smaller that what it really should be, but place the stair to the correct dimensions.
So in this example, place the stair and winders to suit 1200mm but make the actual flight 1199.9mm.
It just doesn't always like the perfect 0mm offset in the corners of the winder.
This will create a 0.1mm offset that shouldn't affect your model or dimensioning.

Barry.

[Anonymous]

Hi Daniel & Barry,

Thanks both for the responses. I have attempted the technique you suggested Barry with little success unfortunately.

Daniel we'll be moving onto 22 in January once I've had the time to update our libraries & templates, I'll let you know if we have any issues with the updated stair tool then.

Many thanks