Creating a straight run of stairs with a landing at the top of the stairs

[binkpear]

All I am trying to do is create a straight run of stairs with a landing at the top (this landing would have similar riser height as the stairs such that you can arrive on the second floor to the left of the stairs). I have created stairs and then a landing and then stairs and deleted the upper stairs to achieve this but when I try and create the auto stairwell opening it says 'the stairs do not reach the floor above. You need to lengthen them to give them more treads.' Even though when I click on the stairs it says, 'steep staircase reaches next level' and shows number of sections as 1 and number of landings as 1. Am I missing something???

[binkpear]

Thanks, Solver for replying. I was unable to do it your way, but I was able to achieve it by building the stairs and landing and creating the stairwell by creating an open below room. I just thought that perhaps you would be able to auto stairwell this scenario, but it appears the software doesn't like this situation. Stairs, landing, stairs - no problem, but not stairs, landing. 

There is one other issue I run across and that is when I want to convert the railings created automatically in the create stairwell option on the floor above into simply interior walls. It seems my only option is to turn them into attic walls... is this correct?

 

I appreciate your time,

Bret

[DzinEye]

 Interesting.  The closest I can get to 'automatic' on this is to first build a set of stairs to figure out what the riser height will be, then build a landing using invisible walls (or railing walls) and set the floor of that room to be down one riser height.  Then build the stairs to that 'landing'... and then use the auto stairwell.

[joey_martin]

Is it a "landing" or the floor for the upstairs? A landing doesn't make sense, but if you are landing on the second floor, simply move the wall or rail that creates the stairwell.

[binkpear]

Here is the specific situation I am trying to accomplish. Like a said, I have a workaround, but it all seems lumpy to me for not a particularly unusual circumstance. When I try and expand the stairwell opening with the existing wall on the second floor in the way, it won't get out of the way. Then when I want to move the railing on the second floor (which I want to change from a railing to a wall, which was my second question) so you can turn and arrive on the second floor, the stairwell is lost. 

 

Thanks again!

stair issue.plan

[Dermot]

The program should let you build an auto stairwell for a stairway that ends with a landing but for some reason it will not.  This seems like the type of thing someone might consider a bug so if it is something important to you then maybe you should report it to our tech support team.

 

Regardless, the auto stairwell tool is really more of a shortcut tool and most of the time it will not actually build the stairwell opening that you want.  In these cases, you can use the auto stairwell as a starting point and then manually adjust the walls and rails to better suit your model.  You can also build your own stairwell at any time by using a combination of interior walls, railings, and/or invisible walls to create a proper room and then mark that room as either a stairwell or open below.  It usually works best to turn on your reference display so that you can see where the stair and walls are on the floor below.

 

The other thing that is helpful with stairs is to always draw them accurately.  Although the program tries to let you be as sloppy as you like, they can be very finicky about certain things.  For example, in your plan posted above, you have drawn the stair and landing partially inside the wall.  Stairs and landings should be next to the wall without overlapping it and when they are not, things like overhangs, wall trim, and handrails may not generate correctly.  In cases where you are drawing walls below the stair to enclose a space like a closet, then you should make sure the walls are completely underneath the stair.  Walls that are half over or half under stairs will just confuse the program and may give you unpredictable results.

 

In your plan, I would first make sure your stair and landing are located accurately on the floor below before I would worry about the stairwell upstairs.

 

Another thing that I find helpful is to use the vector rendering technique when viewing the model.  It makes it much more obvious when you have modeling issues because this technique will show all of the edge lines.  In the picture below, it is much easier to see things like the railing against the wall at the top of the stair (probably created by the auto stairwell tool when you did not have the landing), the baluster railing along the stair against the wall (because the stair is not against the wall), the missing landing edges against the wall (because it is not against the wall), etc.

 

[binkpear]

Thanks, Eric! For whatever reason, I have been suffering not being able to convert my railings to an interior wall. I am sure I changed the wall type in the deep dark past, but didn't realize I needed to uncheck the railing in the general tab! Now I won't have attic walls in my plan where I don't want them, yay! I really appreciate your time, thanks again.