Stairs - Tread numbering in section

Ian_Dorn · ‎2025-03-11

The Problem:

Pretty much on every project...ever, we need to show the tread number for the treads of the steps in section. There is an existing, time consuming method for numbering the treads. It is more of a work-around rather than a reasonable solution see (https://community.graphisoft.com/t5/Documentation/Stair-flight-numbers-in-section/ta-p/303825).

The Solution requested:

What should be available is a checkbox to show it or not in section in the stair object. The information is already built into the stair object. I get that this isn't super simple since the stair object is a complex 3d object. However, if it can be managed manually it should be possible to automate it.

Paul King · ‎2025-07-25

Looking at this myself.

The method described in that link has never worked in my experience for concrete stairs (with no separate treads), and it does not work at all under ArchiCAD 28 even with treads, because the required label type 'step index' is simply not provided with ArchiCAD 28.

It is not present in a new file created from the default template, and it cannot be created as an autotext label because nether 'Step Index' nor 'Flight Index' are autotext entities In ArchiCAD 28.

Would be very glad to be proven wrong!

Ian_Dorn · ‎2025-08-11

@Paul King

Hi Paul, First, sorry it took me so long to respond, I've been a bit swamped. I struggled with the Step index, flight index issue too. The truth is that they were never native elements of Archicad. It was necessary to create them... This is the youtube I originally found that explains the process. It's not perfect... but it does work. (at least up until Archicad 27, which was the last time I had it in my personal template. Using Properties to auto number stairs in sections without starting from 1 in ARCHICAD

regards,

Paul King · ‎2025-08-11

Thanks @Ian_Dorn with a lot of thrashing around I did eventually make a label that worked in AC28, for a single flight of stairs, but only stairs with tread objects, as with earlier versions of ArchiCAD.

i could never figure out how to get it to work for multiple flights - so gave up on it in the end. Will have to take look at your video though - thanks for the link.

That said, if it takes elaborate manual intervention to renumber all the upper flights in a building every time a lower flight changes the number of steps in a given stair object (sometimes story height can change, or there can be more than one stair object per story with complex configurations), this is presumably not going to be much faster or more reliable than other manual options?

A while back I made a simple library part to generate step numbers between two hotspots, based on nominated starting and ending tread numbers (or could be carpark numbers or anything else) - ended up going back to this . I posted this to the forum at the time.