Rich_Winsor Posted July 20, 2015 Share Posted July 20, 2015 OK all of you stair gurus. I have been wrestling with this innocuous little pour all weekend. This is the door stoop of a local historical landmark I am rendering so I need the model to be as accurate as possible. It looks simple enough until you get to the details. The stairs are poured concrete with rails cobbled together with 4 x 4 newels, 1 x 4 balusters and 2 x 4 top and bottom rails. Note that the stairs not only are flared? splayed? outward from the top of the porch but the treads are also undercut to give the effect of having a tread overhang. Any ideas, thoughts, approaches as to how to model these would be greatly appreciated. So far I have got a pretty good facsimile by beating it out of the program with brute force but I was wondering if it is possible to make Chief do the work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg_NY61 Posted July 20, 2015 Share Posted July 20, 2015 Rich I tried making it using P-solid, but it takes time and lots of tweaking, basically its a pain in the A$$... Still not perfect and need some more tweaking so it looks perfect at all angles, but its doable if you want to spend time on it.. I'm not that good at it and this is the first time I tried doing that...Maybe someone else can do it better, in less time doing it another way, but here is what I got The treads and risers are individual p-solids, the side stringers are also... If you want to make it enclosed all you have to do is lower the back to the terrain level. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tommy1 Posted July 20, 2015 Share Posted July 20, 2015 I have done this using slabs (p-solids are fine too). For the top round handrail, I would use a 3D molding polyline so I could break it and angle it down. You might have to do those balasters manuals too or create your own fence panel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chief58 Posted July 20, 2015 Share Posted July 20, 2015 Just another reason stairs and railings need a big overhaul, it would jump Chief real high in the rankings, (my opinion) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg_NY61 Posted July 20, 2015 Share Posted July 20, 2015 Ray, I couldn't agree with you more. The stair and railing design capability's are ancient. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rich_Winsor Posted July 20, 2015 Author Share Posted July 20, 2015 Thanks for the input guys. Here is what I have come up with so far. All the cement is built up from slabs. I used wedges on the front of the stairs (see vector view) to make the undercut effect. I couldn't get any type of railing to generate the look I needed so I made a section of railing (see thumbnail) which worked fine on the flat portion of the porch but I couldn't make it follow down the stairs as in the actual construction. Basically I built the descending rail portions from scratch. I had a play with attaching the rounded portion of the hand rail on top by using a 3d molding polyline and it is doable but will take a lot of niggling to pull off. All in all it's looking pretty decent in Standard View which is all I really need for now. Vector View is a little messy in spots but can probably be cleaned up with a little more precision in the plan and some touch up work. At least I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Unfortunately I didn't do this mockup to scale so I will have the delightful experience of doing it all over again using actual dims. I'll bet that when they built this stoop in 1930 they never imagined what a pain it would be to generate in Chief. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yusuf-333 Posted July 20, 2015 Share Posted July 20, 2015 Thanks for the input guys. Here is what I have come up with so far. All the cement is built up from slabs. I used wedges on the front of the stairs (see vector view) to make the undercut effect. I couldn't get any type of railing to generate the look I needed so I made a section of railing (see thumbnail) which worked fine on the flat portion of the porch but I couldn't make it follow down the stairs as in the actual construction. Basically I built the descending rail portions from scratch. I had a play with attaching the rounded portion of the hand rail on top by using a 3d molding polyline and it is doable but will take a lot of niggling to pull off. All in all it's looking pretty decent in Standard View which is all I really need for now. Vector View is a little messy in spots but can probably be cleaned up with a little more precision in the plan and some touch up work. At least I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Unfortunately I didn't do this mockup to scale so I will have the delightful experience of doing it all over again using actual dims. I'll bet that when they built this stoop in 1930 they never imagined what a pain it would be to generate in Chief. Good job, Try ramps. I explained it in earlier threads. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kbird1 Posted July 22, 2015 Share Posted July 22, 2015 How did you make the Railing section Rich? just curious as the ones I made in the other thread followed the stairs no problem using a manually drawn straight railing ( auto railing off ) and the Balusters set to Panel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rich_Winsor Posted July 24, 2015 Author Share Posted July 24, 2015 OK, so here's the deal. I haven't really spent any time on the railing so far because I'm sure I can get the look I need. What I can't do is get the stairs tools to generate a slab step/tread like the ones in my picture. Forgive the use of a rogue 3D program but here is a 3D model of what one of the stair steps needs to look like. I have exaggerated the tread undercut for clarity. Can this look be achieved using Chief's stair tools or should I just stick to my first approach of stacking slabs together? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DRAWZILLA Posted July 24, 2015 Share Posted July 24, 2015 I use invisible walls along side of the flared stairs, set the stairs as winders ,and they will follow the walls. As for the railing , what you do should work as it looks custom. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kbird1 Posted July 24, 2015 Share Posted July 24, 2015 I don't think CA can do raked risers Rich, another thing to add to the CA Stair makeover List I think. M. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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