Stair Handrail Not Stopping at Ceiling

[jezcollins]

Hi All, just starting out with CA, so apologies if this is obvious but I'm really struggling!

In the image the handrail id going through the ceiling fo the floor above. appreciate the staircase is wider than the opening, but that is the case, and the handrail terminates as it hits the ceiling

 

other info that might be useful: the landing is created by defining the ceiling height of the floor below. I have tried building a separate handrail, following stairs and terminating at ceiling, but the same thing happens. the opening didn't auto create when i placed the stairs(maybe because it's split level?) so i have created and 'open below' room - my guess is that this combination of things is tripping me up somewhere!

 

Any help would be amazing! Im on X10 in Mac

 

Jez

[DzinEye]

When is a 'complete break' not a complete break... when using the 'complete break' stair tool.  This would be somewhat easier with the complete break stair tool, to break the stairs and turn off the railing on the upper portion where you don't want the railing, but it doesn't work.  Even if it worked there would still be some issues.  Perhaps one of the guru's knows another way, but for a kinda-sorta solution that I've used, turn off the railing on that side and manually draw the lower railing, select 'follows stairs' in the railing dbx.  Won't work with every railing type (e.g.: balusters direct into treads) and if you want perfection you'll have to manually model the top bit where it's under the ceiling using p-solids.

[Dermot]

Unfortunately, the program is not designed to cut off stair railings when they run into a ceiling.  If this is something you would like the program to do, then you might want to make a formal suggestion here:  https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/forum/8-suggestions/

 

Regarding Mark's comments about using the complete break tool on stairs, this tool actually does create a complete break so that you will have two independent stair sections that can have completely different attributes.  If the end of one stair section is reasonably close to the start of the other one, then the program will still treat the stair sections as if they are part of the same staircase and enable a lot of automatic behaviors.  

 

If you would like to modify some of the settings of one stair section and not modify any other ones that may be connected in a staircase, there are a couple of easy ways to do this.  First, you can just drag the end of one stair away to temporarily disconnect it from the staircase, make your changes, and then reconnect them.  The other way is less obvious but I think is even easier. Just hold the shift-key down when you select the stair section you want to modify.  This puts you into group select mode and when you open the stair dialog you will only modify the selected sections rather than all of the other ones that might be connected in a staircase.

[DzinEye]

50 minutes ago, Dermot said:

Regarding Mark's comments about using the complete break tool on stairs, this tool actually does create a complete break so that you will have two independent stair sections that can have completely different attributes.  If the end of one stair section is reasonably close to the start of the other one, then the program will still treat the stair sections as if they are part of the same staircase and enable a lot of automatic behaviors.  

 

If you would like to modify some of the settings of one stair section and not modify any other ones that may be connected in a staircase, there are a couple of easy ways to do this.  First, you can just drag the end of one stair away to temporarily disconnect it from the staircase, make your changes, and then reconnect them.  The other way is less obvious but I think is even easier. Just hold the shift-key down when you select the stair section you want to modify.  This puts you into group select mode and when you open the stair dialog you will only modify the selected sections rather than all of the other ones that might be connected in a staircase.

Thank you Dermot!  Good information.  The only time I've 'completely broken' stairs it's to try to do something different to one section than the other, NOT to move them apart, so I could never get the desired results and thought this was a short-coming of the complete break tool.  To be honest, I still feel like it is a bit of a short-coming since there isn't a clear path (without seeing your above commentary) to doing what I thought the complete break tool should do.  Currently with 'completely broken' stairs the section one selects is the only section that highlights and the only section which shows in the dbx when that section is opened, which is probably why you say that it's not obvious to try the shift select method to get just alter that one section.  That is a HUGE hidden feature which should not be a secret.  Now that I know it's all good, but I would still opt that Chief makes a completely broken stair section be individually alterable without any further tweaks... and instead add a tweak like multi- selecting both sections if one wanted to alter both sections.  

[jezcollins]

@DzinEye and @Dermot, Thank you so much for responding - struggling to break the stairs in X10, am I missing something obvious?

 

Many thanks!

[Dermot]

"...struggling to break the stairs in X10, am I missing something obvious?"

 

My apologies, I did not notice that you are still using X10.  X10 does not have the ability to create two independent stair sections that can still connect together to form a staircase.  

 

In your situation, I would probably just turn off the whole rail on that side and then manually create your railing.

[jezcollins]

Thanks All!