Fantastic New Solution Found! Re: How Do You Show Partial Open-Railing Stairs And How To Show The Door To The Basement Stairs Underneath?

[Fun2Learn]

I would sure appreciate your help! I have been struggling for three or four days trying to figure out how to show, on the first floor plan, both the door to the basement stairs (along with the top of the basement stairs) as well as the bottom of the stairs going up to the second floor, as shown on traditional floor plans.  I am especially confused about how to show the basement stairs when they are set back underneath the top two or three treads  of the stairs going to the second floor. In other words, the basement stairs is shorter than the stairs going up.

 

 I think that I have watched all the Chief videos on stairs and read all the help info.  This is just a straight stair situation. I tried drawing the stairs to the second floor as two separate sections, but it won't let me show them with different line styles (I wanted to show the upper part as dashed). Some earlier posts I read about stairs (from the old Chief Talk Forum) made it sound as if people were having to draw stacked stairs in 2-d cad in order to get them to show correctly for permit sets and construction drawings.  YIKES! I hope that now a days there is an easier work-around? 

 

Thanks,

Phyllis

 

P.S. I would also like to know how to widen just the open-ended treads (the ones going up with the open railing shown in the picture), so that they would die into the wall. I am not having much luck using  the winder option or trying to treat it as a separate section of stairs.

 

P.S.S. I started watching the stair videos on Chief Tutor, but there are SO many of them--if anyone knows of a good one that addresses this issue, please let me know which one! Thanks so much!

[DavidJPotter]

In terms of different line styles, what you could do is to place different stair objects on custom layers and those custom layers could then have differing line styles and colors.

Also if you will remove the "Fill" that is present in stair objects by default then with no fill these would then be transparent when stacked floor to floor.

 

One must enclose stairwells with walls, invisible or otherwise so that the ceiling of the basement stairwell can be programmed with "no ceiling above this room" on its structure tab and stairwells on other floors should be named "open below" which then allows the stair objects to be visible, floor to floor.

These are not perfect solutions but are workable.

 

DJP

[Jay_on_Cape]

Phyliss,

 

  To fix the offset problem you're halfway there.  Check winders then go to the tab - style>winder> and change maximum contraction to 5". Then stretch the stairway to the outside of the wall.

 

  As for the two stairways on one floor in plan view I used to use a cad block but now just show the stairway going from the floor as shown to the next upper floor.  The basement stairs will be on the foundation plan then.

[Fun2Learn]

Thanks, David and Jay. Jay--if I do what you suggested, the entire stairs moves over on top of the wall. How can I get just part of it to move over and leave the other part behind the full-height wall? In other words, I would like to have the lower treads  (maybe the first 8 or so) be wider with an open railing and open treads, and then the upper treads be narrower and fit to the inside of the full height wall. Is there a way to have a straight run stair operate as two separate sections? If I draw it that way, it shows up in the dbx as two separate sections, but if I change the tread width for one, it automatically changes the tread width for the other. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks,

Phyllis

[Jay_on_Cape]

Phyllis,

 

  Change those two setting and snap it over the wall and let go of the mouse.  The top section should snap between the wall and look like my attached pictures.

[Rosco2017]

You know Chief should let you "break" stairs like cad boxes so we can just drag the darn things over the top of the wall to get the look you're going for. It would be nice if stairs were more versatile.   Just my silly opinion! This is how we design almost all of out stairs! 

[Fun2Learn]

Thanks again, Jay. Your picture is exactly the look I was going for as far as the stair to the second floor is concerned (part behind wall, part open tread). Did you draw the stair in two separate sections? Are you able to adjust each section separately? I drew mine as two separate sections, but the program is making them act as one : If I check "winder" for one section, the other section automatically is checked as a winder, and if I try to drag one section over the wall, the other section goes along too and either they both are behind a full height wall, or both sections become open tread. Is there some setting somewhere I need to adjust to allow them to act as separate sections? Also--is it possible to show the handrails  instead of the newels and balusters on the stair? I can't seem to find the setting for that.

 

 

Hi, Ross--I agree with your comment. It seems like it would make thing so much simpler. Or at least allow  separate sections of a stair, that are connected to each other and not separated by a landing, to act independently!!!! (If you could also have the upper part of a stair show as "invisible" in plan, then the floor plans would allow you to show stacked stairs easier I would think. Just my newbie opinion....

 

Thanks, guys.

Phyllis

[Jay_on_Cape]

You should do it in one section.  In order to show the handrail instead of the balusters / newels you would have to turn them off and then use a cad box with solid fill.

[Fun2Learn]

Jay--if you draw the stairs as one section, how do you get only some of the treads to extend over the top of the wall? (Pardon my ignorance!) Is there a certain click sequence or edit handle you use?

 

Too bad about the handrails not "being included" automatically in plan view. I imagine most building depts. want to see some hand rails, so I guess I will have to get better at using those cad tools!

 

Thanks again,

Phyllis

[Fun2Learn]

Jay--I just looked at your picture more closely and noticed that the base molding stops where the full height wall ends. This makes me wonder if you were able to achieve  the wall under the open tread portion just by unchecking "open underneath"?    In my case, that doesn't work because it would put that "surface" underneath all of the stairs, and I want to be able to walk underneath the top two or three treads (remember the other portion of my original question where I stated that the door to the basement steps were set back from the top of the second floor stair .)

 

I just found, on page 542 of the CA  x 6 manual, directions for how to draw the scenariot we have been discussing-- they call  a "partial railing" stair. Their solution is to  a stringer big enough to cover the entire open railing area. If you want 8 treads open, like I do, that is a heck of a big whopper stringer, not to mention it still doesn't look quite right, as that isn't how these kinds of stairs are built. You want to be able to see the stringer and the wall surface under the open tread/railing area should be flush with the full height wall.

 

It would seem like a great option to allow stair sub-sections to be treated differently as to width, wall vs. open railing, and line and fill styles. That might solve a myriad of stair drawing problems: the upper most subsection of a stair could be shown as transparent and with a dashed line and the bottom sub-section with a solid line, just like it would be in a traditional drawing.  I would think it would be a simple thing to allow in the program, since Chief can do so many more complicated wiz-bang kind of  maneuvers and other kinds of  "voila" magic with stairs, but I don't know much about computer programming!

 

Maybe someone else has come up with a great work-around?

Thanks,

Phyllis

[Fun2Learn]

I forgot to attach the snip I took of page 542 of the Chief manual, in case anyone is interested. It makes it easier to understand what I am talking about.

Phyllis

[Fun2Learn]

 Ok everyone-- I think I found a  good solution:  I called Chief's tech support tonight and the woman I spoke with came up with a good solution for creating the partial open- railing stairs ( more realistic looking than the one in the Chief manual (with the "stringer on steroids",as shown  above) and without having to uncheck the "open underneath" box, which doesn't really create a real wall with moldings, and doesn't work if you DON"T want a wall under the top-most treads, either, as in my plan above.)  Although the Chief tech hadn't  tried this before, she thought it would work to use  the break wall tool and then designating the part of the wall that should go under the open- railing portion  as a "no locate wall" .  (Is this along the lines of what you were suggesting in your earlier reply, David? ) She thought that you would then could take a wall elevation and adjust the height and slope of the top of the "no locate wall". However, I played around with this idea and discovered that you don't have to adjust the height of the "no locate" wall. You can just drag it under the stairs and it stays there and adjusts its height and slope to fit!!! Whoppee! (I am not very good at adjusting polylines yet, so this is wonderful!)

 

EDIT:Note, after I wrote this post, I discovered that the wall under the stair stringer only stays in place as long as you don't so much as even think about doing anything else with the stair, such as clicking on the stair,  opening the stair dbx, or trying then create a stair well for the basement stairs underneath!!!  I ended up manually lowering the wall to fit under the stringer, following the angle, just to be "safe" and prevent it from popping back up to a full height wall later if I did something. It was a lot easier to do than I thought, though, so that was ok!

 

As I have been playing around with the various ways and the best sequence to achieve a partial open-railing stair,  I have discovered (as most of you all probably already know) that  stairs in CA are so "flexible" that they seem to be very unstable--one little change in the wrong order seems to send these walls and stairs out of whack or the wall that is tucked under the open-railing portion becomes full-height again.! I guess this is because the stairs are so easy to reconfigure that the downside is that you can mess them up  easily, too--esp. for us newbies.  Once the are "messed up" , it seems like they never look quite right again until you redraw them!  Good thing that the stairs in Chief are so easy to redraw--I must have redrawn these about 30 times tonight.  Some of you  probably already know this method, but for those who are newbies or never tried this (it wasn't even in the Chief manual, after all, so I assume there are others out there who don't know this, either), here is what seemed to finally work the best for me, and be the most "stable", was to:

 

1. Set the stair defaults to the narrowest width and check the winders box and set the max. contraction to 5" (as Jay suggested above) (I discovered I needed 6" if I put brackets on the stairs) Getting all the stair defaults in place BEFORE you draw the stairs seemed to work the best for me.

 

2. Draw the full height wall that the open railing will tie in to. (I had object snaps on. Drawing the full-height wall first before the stairs also worked well and made it easier to get it exactly where I wanted it, but it works ok to draw it after the stairs, too.) Then click and drag the stair into place. Create the stairwell at this point. (I found that if I created the stairwell after everything was done, the wall under the stringer will become full-height!)

 

3. Select the stair edge that will have the open railing and drag or use the click-tab method to get it  in place to align with the outer edge of the full-height wall. This will make the part of the stair that is going to  have the open railing wider than the portion between the full-height walls. Then you can use either of  the following two methods:

 

4. a; Drag the full height wall towards the beginning of the stair, stopping at the second tread (since Chief doesn't allow walls under the first two treads.) The wall should be cut off under the bottom of the stair stringer. Though in plan it looks as if it is a full-height wall, you will see it is under the stair stringer in elevation and perspective views.

   -- Use the break-wall tool to break the wall at the point where the full height wall changes to the wall under the stair stringer. .

    --Then select the wall going under the stringer and change it to a "no-locate" wall (and , if preferred, change the wall-type definition so it shows as just a dashed line with no fill. You can also uncheck the display of no- locate walls  so it doesn't show in floor plan, but I found it just looks like a "gap" in the floor plan, and doesn't show the treads going over it, though you could easily fix that with cad lines I guess.)

 

              Or--if 4.a. gives you problems (as it did sometimes with me--not sure why.) the 4. b method below seems to work well all the time:

 

4. b. (Alternate method)  Draw another wall next to the open railing portion of the stair (but not touching the stair or the full-height wall yet. Make it the length needed to go from the end of the full-height wall to the second tread.

 

   --.Open the dbx for that wall and check "no locate" ( and define it as a new wall type with no fill and dashed lines, if preferred)

 

    ---Then drag it over and "under" the stairs until it snaps to the full-height wall. It will automatically adjust to the height and slope of the stringer

 

5. Voila! You now have a partial railing stair, with both a full-height wall and a perfectly aligned, true wall with base molding, underneath the stringer of the open railing portion.

 

 

Hope this helps someone. If anyone has a better way to do this, or some suggestions to tweak it, I'd love to hear them, as this is such a common stair type--at least around here!

Thanks.

Edited September 28, 2014 by Fun2Learn

[Fun2Learn]

I forgot to add: Now I just have to figure out what to do about the top three treads --do you see them there hanging down from the ceiling? I needed the space under them for the hallway. Any suggestions? Should I just draw a wall and move the bottom up ? Is that even possible? Or should I just use a polyline solid and pretend it is a wall?

Phyllis

[RevolutionDB]

Chief needs to figure out a way to show stairs broken on the floor plan. Many people have complained about this problem - you can't have both the plan version and the 3D version correct at the same time. I would pull the stairs back and never show a 3D of the top of the stairwell.

[Fun2Learn]

Rob (and anyone else who is interested)--

  I I finally found a better way to create a partial open railing stair--and allow the upper treads of the stairs to show as dashed lines while the lower show as solid (like you mention above, Rob!)  

 

  I had  posted a suggestion I had to improve the stair tool by allowing stair "sub-sections" to be independently edited, (like stair "sections", which are separated by landings, already can be. Be careful not to confuse the two terms.). If you scoll down the thread, Joe Carrick  posted  a method he uses for straight stairs--he creates  a "tread-sized" landing to separate the stair into "sections" (He uses the term "sub-sections", but he meant "sections".). The two sections can then be edited to have different widths and fill and line styles, (you have to check the "allow stair sections to move independently" box in the preferences dialog first). Joe pulled the sections apart to edit them separately and then put them back together again. But then Kilgore made the comment that you can use the "shift-click" method (not to be confused with the "click-shift" method!) to select each stair section and edit  it independently without having to pull it apart and put it back together again.

 

I tried it this method, and it works pretty well.  I found that I had to make sure that the "winders" box was unchecked, though, or the landing and stairs didn't " behave" when I tried to make the open-railing section wider!  The only problem is that the handrail at the wall had a break in it where the tread-sized "landing"  was, but maybe that can be fixed somehow with a railing  setting somewhere?  Here is a link to the thread:

https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/index.php?/topic/2354-solve-stair-problems-by-allowing-sub-sections-to-have-differing-fill-and-line-styles-widths-and-other-settings/

 

Hope this helps.

Phyllis

[glennw]

How about this for a partial open railing stair - as Fun2Learn is describing.

It's a bit of futzing around - but it does work pretty well.

 

It uses 2 stair flights on separate layers.

This allows different settings for each stair - things like line type railings, width, transparency, etc, etc. 

No need for a landing either.

You can control the stair heights manuall to get the upper section at the correct height.

It utilises 2 layer sets  one for the lower floor and one for the upper floor.

The line types are set By Layer so that when you change floor, you need to change the Layer Set to get it all to look correct - not too hard.

 

This setup allows the stairs to look correct on both floors and 3D.

It allows you to see under the upper stairs (like seeing the toilet under).

 

I'll attach the plan and some pics.

Just remember to use the FLOOR PLAN Set for the lower floor and FLOOR PLAN Set 2 when you are on the upper floor. 

stairs.zip

[Fun2Learn]

Glenn--Thank you so, so much for taking the time to post this fantastic method of handling stairs and for attaching the helpful pics and file! This is a brilliant solution!  (I wonder why this isn't in the Chief Architect Reference Manual or explained in any of their training videos?? I think I had watched every single one of them that came up when I did a search on the topic "stairs".) I also wonder why the support tech person hadn't thought of this solution when I had called? Maybe you are one of the few who have discovered this method?)

  Now, if Chief could just tweak the program to allow this to happen a bit more automatically, or at least set up the stair dialog box or defaults to make it more obvious that  your method is even a possibility (since, obviously, not everyone is aware of this solution) it would really improve the "user-friendliness" and intuitiveness of the program.

  I am still not very knowledgeable about layers yet, so it is very helpful that youhave attached the file so I can see how you set them up.

 

This is fantastic--you have made my day.  Now I feel so much happier again with my wonderful, new Chief software.   (Now if Chief could only also allow the option to show the handrails in plan.......)

 

Thanks again, Glenn!

 

God bless ya,

 

Phyllis

[glennw]

(I wonder why this isn't in the Chief Architect Reference Manual or explained in any of their training videos?? I think I had watched every single one of them that came up when I did a search on the topic "stairs".) I also wonder why the support tech person hadn't thought of this solution when I had called? Maybe you are one of the few who have discovered this method?)

 

 

 

Phyllis,

 

It isn't in the manual and the support don't know about it because it is just something I worked out today to try and come up with a solution to this old, old problem.

Like most of these "workarounds", there are always some things that don't work 100%.

 

(Now if Chief could only also allow the option to show the handrails in plan.......)

 

 

Do you want to see handrails in plan, or Newels and Balusters, which you can already do. 

In my example, you can just turn them on to display in the stair dbx.

 

PS. By the way, I didn't worry too much about making the stairs reach floor or tidying things up to much in my plan.

I just wanted to get the process down to see if it would all work, so please don't post that the stairs don't reach the next floor or this little thing is wrong or that the toilet door is above the stairs, or that.......it is the method that is important, not the detail.

[Joe_Carrick]

FWIW,

 

There have been numerous request for Stair Enhancements.

 

These have included all of what's been discussed in this thread and more:

 

Break Lines with the dashed lines vs solid lines

Fill vs No Fill

Railings shown over the Stairs in Plan

Solid Nosings with Dashed Risers

Variance in Stair Widths within a single run.

More flexibility in the design and control of handrails

Make the Total Height of a Stair be from Floor to Floor instead of Floor to top Tread Surface

etc.

 

The reality that I learned early in my career as an Architect is that stairs are one of the most difficult things to design and detail.  I'm not that surprised that CA's not eager to undertake a major modification to the Stairs.  It's a daunting list and the matrix is already so complex that figuring out how to add functionality without breaking something that currently works (at least fairly well) would be a big worry.

[Fun2Learn]

Glenn-  Wow--you just thought of this today? You ought to get some sort of Chief Work-Around Award!  I just tried it your method and it worked great for me and was easy--even for a newbie like me.  Heh- if I can do this, anyone can!   ( I did have to re-watching a video about working with layer sets, though, to figure out how to add the new layers and plan sets, though!  )

 

I first put in a complete stair and made a note of the top height and riser height needed for the number of treads I wanted. Then I deleted that stair and put in just the open-railing portion of my final stair, using the riser heights noted earlier,  and made a note of what the top tread height was and made that the bottom height of the second stair.  Then I put in the top-height for the second stair, using what  I had noted earlier, and everything connected!!! Easy and quick.

 

The only tiny imperfection (and not a big deal, considering the benefits of using this method for everything else!) is that, in cross-section, the stringer is split into two (an easy fix with Cad, I would think?)  I think it looks fine in camera view, though. Also, you will notice that in my particular plan  the railing and the wall handrail on the left don't connect, even though I had checked that I wanted smooth railing transitions in the dbx. Perhaps that would be corrected if I split the stairs  at another spot, rather than right between the two railing conditions. The wall railing on the right connected just fine.

   I am guessing that your method works because the computer is being "tricked" into treating these two parts of the same stair as if they were two separate stairs, rather than what Chief would classify as "sub-sections" of the same stair! Hopefully Chief can use your idea and build it into the program with the tweaks needed to automatically connect the stringers in section, and the handrail transitions in camera view, so that they appear the way they would be actually be built. But for now, I am satisfied with your solution and will use it!

 

You mentioned that you could see the handrails in plan if you turned them on in the display. I don't see them in my display menu. Do you mean if you manually draw them in plan with CAD? (And, by the way--does anyone know how I can move the open- railing  over so that it centers on the wall to which it is attached?)

 

I hope you don't mind, Glenn, but I copied your first post above with the "solution" under another  thread I had started about Stairs under the "suggestions" forum so that Chief and anyone else interested could see it. It really went along with the discussion under that post! I also posted a link back to this thread on there.

 

Thanks again so much.

Phyllis

 

 P.S. I purposely wanted to show the entire stairs as solid lines from the second floor, though I am sure it would have been easy to change the lower treads to dashed, as you had done on your second floor plan.

 

P.S.S. I did have to remove the automatic up and down arrows and manually draw ones in--not a big deal, but that would hopefully be another advantage (having arrows automatically end- up in the right spots) if Chief could make this method more of an automatic part of their program!

 

P.S.S. Note that I added a ceiling light , per your suggestion, DSHALL! I probably should have added another though!

[dshall]

.......P.S.S. Note that I added a ceiling light , per your suggestion, DSHALL! I probably should have added another though!

It is still not very good.  Post the  plan and I will see what I can do.  You need to make sure the light is in the room that the camera is in and it never hurts to put the LIGHT SOURCE  (not talking about a light fixture),  in each room.

 

It still appears you are missing a light source,  the jpegs looks darker than I would of guessed it should look like.

[dshall]

Two pics,  one WITHOUT light source,  the other WITH 3 light sources.....  however one light source would work quite well.

 

The light source tends to "unmuddy" the picture.

[DRAWZILLA]

Scott is correct, I also use light sources all the time and turn off any fixtures in the plan. RT's go much faster also.

[Fun2Learn]

...

The reality that I learned early in my career as an Architect is that stairs are one of the most difficult things to design and detail.  I'm not that surprised that CA's not eager to undertake a major modification to the Stairs.  It's a daunting list and the matrix is already so complex that figuring out how to add functionality without breaking something that currently works (at least fairly well) would be a big worry.

Hi Joe,

  I agree. I always hated hand-drafting stairs, (the tread widths (and risers in section) are so hard to get exactly even!) That is one of the reasons I was so hopeful that the computer would do all the "work" for me without having to do to much "fussing around" to fix details! It is so amazing what Chief can do--I don't want to seem like I am whining about the program in general.  I know it will keep getting better and better. Who would ever want to go back to a 2-d only program? I appreciate all the great ideas being shared on this forum--yours included!

Thanks,

Phyllis

[DRAWZILLA]

I wouldn't even like to go back 2 versions of Chief, let alone hand drafting