Hello
You are right. This is not a wish, rather an issue, for most of our American (and some Japanese) users.
This behavior was designed in a way that supports the standards and workflows of most of our users all around the world. Most of the standards represent stairs with the arrow always pointing in the same direction on all Levels (usually up), with slight differences about how they represent the visible and hidden parts (dashed or solid lines). That's why a Floor plan view consists of 2 parts: a visible, and a hidden part, with different representation options.
In the current menu structure, including an additional option to have hidden-visible option sets separately for different levels, requires a huge change in the way it is currently designed and coded, so we couldn't include this bug fix before the release of AC21, and we also can't implement this change within an update. We are already working on a solution for this, for version 22.
In the meantime, we have managed to find a way to satisfy some users with the current system with a workaround until the final release:
These users only display the parts of the stair below the break-mark on the lower floor, and on the upper floor they show the entire staircase. This allows them to have the lower-level part be only a "visible" part, with it's own settings (arrow pointing upwards), and the upper-level part to be only a "hidden" part (arrow pointing downwards). This way they can set up both views with the same line types and settings, only with the walking line pointing in the opposite direction.
If you need to show visible and hidden parts both on a single level, the workaround in the meantime is to turn the walking line start- and end-symbols off in the Model View Options dialogue (in the Detail level of Stair section), and draw them with lines and fills (that can be grouped with the stair).
Sorry for the inconvenience until we fix this issue.
Daniel Alexander Kovacs
Professional Services Consultant
GRAPHISOFT
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