How to remove railing on only one section of stairs

[dshall]

I know it is  possible,  but I forgot....  How to remove railing on only one section of stairs

 

[dshall]

Thanks Eric

 

[Joe_Carrick]

Scott,

 

For someone who can remember dozens of hotkeys I don't understand how you could have forgotten that process.  

[dshall]

7 minutes ago, Joe_Carrick said:

Scott,

 

For someone who can remember dozens of hotkeys I don't understand how you could have forgotten that process.  

 

Here is the explanation......  stairs are soooooo  screwed up and limiting that I do my best to keep it simple.  Very rarely do I have to mess with this crappy stair implementation.  I know everybody else has complained about the stairs,  but now it is my turn.  I have been futzing with this stupid stairs for over an hour....  why can't we  put a rail on a wall that follows the stairs.  We have been asking for this nonsense for 12 years,  and it is still a huge hack job.

 

I am so frustrated at this point...  will somebody at headquarters please make a concerted effort to make stairs more user friendly.  Pleeeeaaaaaasssse!

 

 

[Rosco2017]

2 minutes ago, dshall said:

I am so frustrated at this point...  will somebody at headquarters please make a concerted effort to make stairs more user friendly.  Pleeeeaaaaaasssse!

 

 

AMEN!!!!!! +1

[Joe_Carrick]

OK, I fully understand your frustration.

 

Stair Handrails should be independent of Guardrails and both should be available on Stairs.  IMO Stair Guardrails should have all of the capabilities of general Railings (aka Guardrails). 

 

Obviously, CA either doesn't understand this or simply doesn't want to take the time to fix it.  X10 improved Railings but ignored this important feature when it came to Stairs.  Hopefully they will address it in X11.

[Richard_Morrison]

10 hours ago, Joe_Carrick said:

OK, I fully understand your frustration.

 

Stair Handrails should be independent of Guardrails and both should be available on Stairs.  IMO Stair Guardrails should have all of the capabilities of general Railings (aka Guardrails). 

Guardrails are called "Guards" now. 

[Joe_Carrick]

1 hour ago, Richard_Morrison said:

Guardrails are called "Guards" now. 

Only in the Building Code. 

That's really pretty dumb because a "Guard" by definition is generally "a person who protects or controls". 

There are Bank Guards, Prison Guards, even Guard Dogs - but there is no such thing as a "Wall Guard".

 

Obviously the person(s) that wrote the code were not linguists.

[Doug_N]

The Ontario Building Code defines a guard as:

 

"A guard means a protective barrier, with or without openings through it, that is around openings in floors or at the open sides of stairs, landings, balconies, mezzanines, galleries, raised walkways or other locations to prevent accidental falls from one level to another."

 

While a handrail is used to guide a person's path of travel and to assist them to stay upright in the event of a trip or stumble its primary purpose is different than that of a guard. Handrails and guards may happily coincide if the height restrictions for them are both the same, but often the requirement for a guard is at an elevation that exceeds the maximum height of a handrail.  Hence the need for both in many circumstances.

 

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the Noun Guard this way:

 

for the noun

1. a person who keeps watch, especially a soldier or other person formally assigned to protect a person or to control access to a place.

   "a security guard"

   synonyms:

   sentry, sentinel, security guard, watchman, night watchman; More

2. a device worn or fitted to prevent injury or damage.

   "a retractable blade guard"

   synonyms:

   safety guard, safety device, protective device, shield, screen, fender;  bumper, buffer "a metal guard"

[Richard_Morrison]

12 hours ago, Joe_Carrick said:

Only in the Building Code. 

That's really pretty dumb because a "Guard" by definition is generally "a person who protects or controls". 

There are Bank Guards, Prison Guards, even Guard Dogs - but there is no such thing as a "Wall Guard".

 

Obviously the person(s) that wrote the code were not linguists.

I think the problem with calling a guard a guardrail is that often they are not railings. If you look up the etymology of railing it probably will have something to do with horizontal bars. Calling a solid wall a "railing" seems linguistically incorrect.

[Richard_Morrison]

14 hours ago, Joe_Carrick said:

There are Bank Guards, Prison Guards, even Guard Dogs - but there is no such thing as a "Wall Guard".

 

http://www.wallguard.com/wallguards-crash-rails/

[Joe_Carrick]

Richard,

 

Really?  You are using Hospital Wall Handrails/Crashrails for this discussion? 

 

I spent the first 12 years of my career doing predominately Medical Facilities.  That included several very large hospitals as well as about a dozen convalescent hospitals.  Those items serve 2 purposes:

1. Handrails for patients to use when getting exercise.
2. Protecting the walls from medical equipment impacts (gurneys, rolling stretchers, wheel chairs, etc)

Let's be sensible here.  I use the term Guardrail to describe what the building code refers to as "Guards".  The can be a Railing Wall or a Solid Half Wall.  The key is that they have to meet the requirements for Railing Walls at a Minimum.  That includes the height and maximum opening requirements - which have changed drastically over the past 50 years. 

 

Currently (as Doug stated above) Stair Handrails and "Guards" are often required together.  The Stair Handrail can never suffice by itself at the open side of a Stair.

 

[Richard_Morrison]

Just responding facetiously to your statement that "there is no such thing as a 'Wall Guard.'" (And BTW, I did healthcare work for about 15 years.) Lighten up, Joe. It's a beautiful day outside. 

[SNestor]

Well...looks like Scott’s handrail topic has left the tracks.  

[Doug_N]

Actually I agree with Richard.  Guards are across  windows, at the edge of parapets and in wall openings where the distance to the next lower surface is greater than 600mm 

[SNestor]

On 6/28/2018 at 12:02 PM, dshall said:

 

Here is the explanation......  stairs are soooooo  screwed up and limiting that I do my best to keep it simple.  Very rarely do I have to mess with this crappy stair implementation.  I know everybody else has complained about the stairs,  but now it is my turn.  I have been futzing with this stupid stairs for over an hour....  why can't we  put a rail on a wall that follows the stairs.  We have been asking for this nonsense for 12 years,  and it is still a huge hack job.

 

I am so frustrated at this point...  will somebody at headquarters please make a concerted effort to make stairs more user friendly.  Pleeeeaaaaaasssse!

 

 

Did you ever get it figured out...

[Joe_Carrick]

5 hours ago, Doug_N said:

Actually I agree with Richard.  Guards are across  windows, at the edge of parapets and in wall openings where the distance to the next lower surface is greater than 600mm 

I'm not disagreeing that "Guards" as currently specified in the IBC, CBC, CRC, etc are as you and Richard say.  It's just that once upon a time when I was much younger we had the UBC and the terminology at that time was "Guardrail".  It's the terminology that was used for the first 45-50 years of my working life so it's what my somewhat calcified brain uses.

[Greg_NY61]

 

Guards are in place to prevent accidental falls... that is how building code interprets Guards. So if you take IRC code as an example the guard height minimum is 36" if there is 30" or more drop... the stair code specifies that the handrail has to be min 34-38" meaning that the handrail and top of the guard can be one and the same.

 

Now if you look at IBC, the guard should be min 42" so if there is a 30" drop you need to have both the guard @42" and handrail @34-38"

[dshall]

2 hours ago, SNestor said:

Did you ever get it figured out...

 

I faked it by creating a symbol of stairs in a cloned stripped plan and then placing the symbol in my plan that I sent to layout......so I could get a half decent rendering........  so no.......  I did not figure it out and the stair tools can be esssentially useless in most of my typical stair con figs.

[Joe_Carrick]

2 hours ago, Greg_NY61 said:

Now if you look at IBC, the guard should be min 42" so if there is a 30" drop you need to have both the guard @42" and handrail @34-38"

Yes, and not all my projects are residential so I need the software to be able to handle that situation.  Interestingly, CA's headquarters are in a 2 story commercial building with exactly that stair configurations where the Guards and Handrail co-exist.  The Guard is in the form of a Railing Wall and the Handrail is attached to the Guard.

 

It would be a great example for the software engineers at CA to use.

 

btw, Hotels also need this kind of Stairs with 42" high Guards & 34-38" high Handrails.

[SNestor]

1 hour ago, dshall said:

 

I faked it by creating a symbol of stairs in a cloned stripped plan and then placing the symbol in my plan that I sent to layout......so I could get a half decent rendering........  so no.......  I did not figure it out and the stair tools can be esssentially useless in most of my typical stair con figs.

 

I feel your pain!  Glad you were able to come up with at least a modest solution.  

Too bad your topic got hijacked 

[Joe_Carrick]

2 minutes ago, SNestor said:

Too bad your topic got hijacked

Yep, but Scott has hijacked a few in his time

[Kbird1]

4 hours ago, dshall said:

 

I faked it by creating a symbol of stairs in a cloned stripped plan and then placing the symbol in my plan that I sent to layout......so I could get a half decent rendering........  so no.......  I did not figure it out and the stair tools can be esssentially useless in most of my typical stair con figs.

 

Checking the Ignore Subsection Boundaries Box in the Staircase DBX worked for me in a test plan for the Railing , assuming you mean that railing on the 3rd flight against the Wall?

 

Eric's CTRL or Shift Select of a particular Flight does work but is really finicky ( you get a different looking selection type when it works) but I couldn't get it to work on the middle Flight in my test plan at all , in the pic below I removed the wall railing on the 3rd flight too using CTRL- Select as a test without it disappearing on the 2nd flight too.

 

I do have move Stair Subsection independently on in Preferences but am not sure if that makes a difference in this case or not?

 

M.

 

[dshall]

8 hours ago, Kbird1 said:

 

Checking the Ignore Subsection Boundaries Box in the Staircase DBX worked for me in a test plan for the Railing , assuming you mean that railing on the 3rd flight against the Wall?

 

.......

 

 

 

I tried that in the defaults and I also tried it for the staircase DBX,  it did not work for me.  The shift selection worked for me.

 

[Kbird1]

6 hours ago, dshall said:

 

 

I tried that in the defaults and I also tried it for the staircase DBX,  it did not work for me.  The shift selection worked for me.

 

 

Ok , I thought you had made a symbol and I didn't think that was necessary... not sure why I can't shift-select the middle flight though.

 

M.