dshall Posted January 21, 2015 Share Posted January 21, 2015 I will give it a try in the AM, and hopefully we can get together in MY AM to do a vid on this, let me know..... I need your email..... 6:00 am my time, 5:00 pm your time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yusuf-333 Posted January 21, 2015 Author Share Posted January 21, 2015 OK. I have sent you the email, now it is around my 8am. see your 6am my late afternoon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cheryl_C_Crane Posted January 21, 2015 Share Posted January 21, 2015 WOW! WOW! WOW! I have a real life need for 22 treads and a qtr. circle landing in the middle. This is amazing! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg_NY61 Posted January 26, 2015 Share Posted January 26, 2015 Yusuf, This is an awesome way of doing this in CA, I been making them in Sketchup using the following bellow formula and then importing model into CA, now you saved me a s^*t load of time doing this in CA, I just never tried manipulating stairs this way in CA. If you in NY, lunch is on me. This is how I calculate when laying out the stairs in Sketchup I made a template as you using to start in CA, then I use basic guidelines to meet the building code to calculate the stairs. Usually I use rule of thumb and make a 70" diameter staircase, it makes it easier to walk on it. Knowing min tread should be 26" I make it 32"-34 when doing layout (of course depending on the room you have) .The center column and two treads make a total diameter of 70". That would be the 2 treads (2 x 32") and 6" support column you get 70" diameter. Next to find the circumference of the stairway which is diameter x 3.1416 so in this case 70" x 3.1416 = 220" (rounded to the nearest "). So with a 9' ceiling per say that's 14 steps+ landing and 220"÷14=15.7" that will give us the tread width, so with overlapping this and that a 16" wide tread makes a nice comfortable stairway and it will make one full 360-degree turn through its travel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
glennw Posted January 26, 2015 Share Posted January 26, 2015 Kudos to Yusuf for his solution and to Scott for the video. This is my take on the spiral stair conundrum. It uses exactly the same program functions as Scott's video, just a different method to get there. My method took about 2 minutes. The solution lies in recognising that a single stair will not revolve more than 360 deg, but a sub-section of a stair will rotate over another sub-section. This video uses sub-sections: http://screencast.com/t/t6wIKFYBVbD There is also another way I came up with which involves creating separate stairs and attaching them on top of each other (not using sub-sections). The end result in 3D is the same but the plan view is better because each stair can have it's own line style and by using the drawing levels (bring to front, etc), you get more control over the stair display. Also, if you select all the stacked stairs together, the all appear in the stair dbx as sub-sections even though they aren't joined. The picture below shows 3 stairs stacked together (not sub-sections). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dshall Posted January 26, 2015 Share Posted January 26, 2015 Great job Glenn, don't know why I could not figure that out. Probably the quickest method to date. Now what about the rounded edges for the treads. Do you think we have to put the stairs into a "silo" and check the treads as winders? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
glennw Posted January 26, 2015 Share Posted January 26, 2015 Scott, No, doesn't work - I tried that. It just gives the tread edge 2 straight facets instead of 1 straight edge. Probably needs a bug or suggestion report. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
glennw Posted January 26, 2015 Share Posted January 26, 2015 Scott Update. I can get the round tread edge, but I loose the balusters! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg_NY61 Posted January 26, 2015 Share Posted January 26, 2015 Nice Job Glen, Thank you! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dennis_Gavin Posted January 26, 2015 Share Posted January 26, 2015 This has been a very interesting thread. What a resource CT is thanks to some very generous people. Next challenge: How do you get a smooth railing? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yusuf-333 Posted January 26, 2015 Author Share Posted January 26, 2015 Glenn this is very nice upgrade. I really appreciate that, very nice control on the joined stairs. This is the way we can do a good job by sharing heads produce better outputs. Nice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DRAWZILLA Posted January 26, 2015 Share Posted January 26, 2015 Very nice Glen, even simpler to do. I always wondered what those sub-sections were for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JLDrafting Posted January 26, 2015 Share Posted January 26, 2015 Did this about a year ago. Not at all like the stair method. The stainless material stripe irritates me, but just needed a concept for the stainless fabricator. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dennis_Gavin Posted January 26, 2015 Share Posted January 26, 2015 Jim - your railing rises nice and smoothly but the ones in the videos for the 360 + are segmented. What is the difference? I guess I will actually have to play with it to find out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JLDrafting Posted January 26, 2015 Share Posted January 26, 2015 Jim - your railing rises nice and smoothly but the ones in the videos for the 360 + are segmented. What is the difference? I guess I will actually have to play with it to find out. Dennis, I did this with CA, but did some CAD work to determine the step, baluster and handrail. Code requires a certain depth of step at a certain point in the path. I used cad to draw the step. Converted to polyline solid. There was some trial and error to get the size and the angle of the next step. The baluster is just a solid and the handrail a molding polyline (I think). The step, baluster and handrail segment were then copied (number of treads), moved (Z height of the riser) and rotated (degrees) about a point placed in the center of the column. The landing is just a slab or polyline solid at the floor level. The glass handrails shown are also done with polyline solids. I would never have figured out the CA stair method. Kudos to the pros that discovered that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe_Carrick Posted January 26, 2015 Share Posted January 26, 2015 Dennis, I have requested several times that CA add a "Heli-Coil" Solid (basically a spring that has a constant cross section perpendicular to the slope of the coil. Maybe they'll do it for X8. In the mean time, I use a set of 4 short tubes (7.5 degrees each) copy/repeated/rotated as Jim does to create a 30 degree section. I then convert this to a Symbol and adjust the smoothing angle. It's not 100% perfect but it get's close enough to appear smooth in a render or ray trace view. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dennis_Gavin Posted January 27, 2015 Share Posted January 27, 2015 OK, thanks Jim & Joe. Fortunately I don't have any spiral stairs to do but was curious for the future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg_NY61 Posted February 2, 2015 Share Posted February 2, 2015 I agree Joe, Heli-coil solid would be a good addition. I tried to make the stairs they way you explained, and they came out really nice. I made the treads using counter top, curved the edges and put edge molding on visible sides. Tried to do the railing the way you explained and I can't make that happen, but will work on it some more. Instead I dropped the model into Sketchup and I have curve maker plugin in there with Helix tool so I used that to make a railing and scaled to the stair model and imported to CA as a railing symbol. Here is the outcome. Thanks for the tip and your time, its a real nice way to make a custom circular stair. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dshall Posted February 2, 2015 Share Posted February 2, 2015 ........I tried to make the stairs they way you explained, and they came out really nice. I made the treads using counter top, curved the edges and put edge molding on visible sides. ....... Why make the tread out of a countertop? Let's think about this. If you look at Greg's picture, we can see a black base for the tread with a wood top. What is the black? Is that the countertop? No.. So Greg, I get the fact that the countertop is a wood grain material, but what is the black? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lbuttery Posted February 2, 2015 Share Posted February 2, 2015 Why make the tread out of a countertop? Scott: you asked earlier if Yusef's solution was Genius or a workaround using non-stair parts makes it a work-around Lew 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yusuf-333 Posted February 3, 2015 Author Share Posted February 3, 2015 Lew this is pretty simple in chief according to my video on smooth railing and still not out of the stair and railings. Simply the threads are landings here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lbuttery Posted February 3, 2015 Share Posted February 3, 2015 Yusef: great, a solution that uses stair parts only would be genius CA needs to document this in the manual and with videos Lew Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yusuf-333 Posted February 3, 2015 Author Share Posted February 3, 2015 Yusef: great, a solution that uses stair parts only would be genius CA needs to document this in the manual and with videos Lew Thanks Lew.A lot more unseen powers.... in chief. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg_NY61 Posted February 3, 2015 Share Posted February 3, 2015 Why make the tread out of a countertop? Let's think about this. If you look at Greg's picture, we can see a black base for the tread with a wood top. What is the black? Is that the countertop? No.. So Greg, I get the fact that the countertop is a wood grain material, but what is the black? The black is p-solid, basically its there to reduce the riser opening height to meet the code , I used counter top for the tread because its easier to put edge molding on selected edges and you can basically manipulate in any way as you would p-solid. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dshall Posted February 3, 2015 Share Posted February 3, 2015 The black is p-solid, basically its there to reduce the riser opening height to meet the code , I used counter top for the tread because its easier to put edge molding on selected edges and you can basically manipulate in any way as you would p-solid. Yeah, that is what I thought. The point being, the tread and the tread base are two different items. I would prefer them to be one in the same. One is not dependent on the other. Not a big deal, merely a comment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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