Staircase

mut

Ill try to get some pics of installed staircases, (I don't generally get to see the finished article in situ)

The alternating treads flight, it allows you to get a staircase in where you wouldn't normally be able to fit one, its legal as long as its only serving one room. that one is particularly steep (its outside building regs by quite a bit) but after advising the customer that, its what they wanted!

thanks for the comments guys.

Tom.

Gene Davis

If you don't mind, Tom, I would like to see some snaps of whatever intermediate Sketchup images you use for the actual making of parts.

Or instead, do you export files to a CAD program for use in making part drawings?

I am an enthusiastic SU modeler, and use it to create and build houses, site-built staircases, and in many aspects of cabinet and furniture making.

Attached is a model I did to develop the method for doing an open-riser staircase, where the treads have upholstered carpet inlays at top and bottom, and finished hardwood nosing and back pieces. Because the desired look was for treads not too thick, a welded steel angle frame is buried inside. Stringers are visible, and are in the same species and finish as the tread edges.

Open riser carpeted treads.skp

kwick7

@unknownuser said:

Always good to see SU used in such a meaningful way...I think the ladder stairs are just the coolest thing...never seen it done that way before. Thanks for sharing.

You don't see too many of them these days.

That stair with the circular landing - fantastic!

eeva

great to see the SU pictures AND the finished stairs!

to those ladder stairs: in germany they are also called "samba-stairs", because of the way your hips move, like dancing samba, when you go up.

there are a few cool ones built, i like these very much, because they are also used as a book shelf.

juanjo06

sketchup... very usefull!!! eso no lo discutimos nunca

mut

@eeva said:

great to see the SU pictures AND the finished stairs!

to those ladder stairs: in germany they are also called "samba-stairs", because of the way your hips move, like dancing samba, when you go up.

there are a few cool ones built, i like these very much, because they are also used as a book shelf.

yea they are cool, although they look a little unsafe, would have to guard both sides, and lose the storage space on the smaller shelves (if that makes sense?)

mut

@gene davis said:

If you don't mind, Tom, I would like to see some snaps of whatever intermediate Sketchup images you use for the actual making of parts.

Or instead, do you export files to a CAD program for use in making part drawings?

I am an enthusiastic SU modeler, and use it to create and build houses, site-built staircases, and in many aspects of cabinet and furniture making.

Attached is a model I did to develop the method for doing an open-riser staircase, where the treads have upholstered carpet inlays at top and bottom, and finished hardwood nosing and back pieces. Because the desired look was for treads not too thick, a welded steel angle frame is buried inside. Stringers are visible, and are in the same species and finish as the tread edges.

Hi gene, ill try to send some pics tomorrow when im back at work, but basically I just lay out the components that I need to machine, and then goto top view in parallel projection mode, and output DXF, clean up a little in QCAD, then just use that in some CAM software.

Can i just ask why you used steel? Beacuse I would have used 35mm treads, and just relive them away to take the carpet inlays, this would be plenty strong enough, (i think you have over engineered it)

also in the uk that design wouldnt hit regulations because you cant have 100mm gap between the treads (or spindles or anything else) so you would have to put a dummy half riser in, or a steel bar to close the gap.

I bet it looks good how youve done it though, any pics of the finished article?

thanks for the comments,

tom.

Gene Davis

Tom, here is a photo of the finished stairs, but I must credit architect Kelly Davis of SALA Architects, Stillwater, Minnesota, for the work and design. I clipped the pic from SALA's website.

I saw the house photos and the interior shots and thought the stairs such a cool item, I modeled a concept in SU for possible future use. I am involved in housebuilding and remodeling.

The stairs have carpet faces on top and bottom sides, and to keep the whole tread assembly as slim as possible, I considered the steel angle core to be a reasonable structural solution. The Davis house has a lot of elements borrowed from those seen in Frank Lloyd Wright's "Fallingwater" masterpiece, and my guess is that steel was used in lots of places in the structure, so to use a little steel in the steps was a natural extension. Structural steel fabricators are doing steel pan steps for stairs built for commercial buildings all the time, and Davis may have seen something and gotten an idea.

My concept has the top of the tread done with carpet and an underlayment upholstered to a 19mm thick piece of plywood, laid into the steel cradle with shims underneath. The bottom carpet face is glued to a piece of 9.5mm plywood, which goes in first before the top insert, and is fixed to the steel with short screws driven from topside, through the angle leg and into the ply.

A pic of the finished stairs in the Davis design is attached, as is a render I did in Kerky of a quick massing study I did for the whole house, using SU.

As for permissibility of open-riser stairs, many parts of the U.S. have little or no building code enforcement when it comes to this detail, and my locale, plus the location of this Davis house, are the same.

Carpeted treads.jpg

Holy cantilevers.jpg

watkins

Dear Gene,

How did you fix the top section, or did it just sit in the tray formed by the welded angle iron frame? From the picture one can see why the client/architect wanted open risers.

It struck me that the cavities might be used as a 'secure store' for essential documents, such as passports etc. I have a hollow book for mine (for example http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Secret-Storage-Books).

Regards,
Bob

mut

Those stairs look really good, nice and clean.

I think that i would have made them in a slightly different way, (and perhaps not have the inlay the full width) but realy like the delicate/open look of the thin treads.

Gene, I attached a file with my components laid out, ready for export.

Tom.

14.skp

Gene Davis

Thanks for the share, Tom.

I use Sketchup to figure and model arrangements of cabinets and appliances and fixtures in new and remodeled kitchens, then I take my finished work, which has resolved the sizes of all the cabinets, and use a freeware program, eCabinets, to load all the cabinets as a batch into a jobfile. There is no direct interface like your use of a .dxf export . . . I plug the width and height parameters into the eCabs program using my fingers. A 20-box kitchen takes me about a minute per cab to load.

I then email the jobfile to a CNC shop that cuts all the parts for me, charging me a flat rate per sheet, depending on whether the job is cut from 48x96 or 60x120 (inches) sheets. The parts are all edgebanded per the label instructions eCabinets prints, then stacked and banded to pallets, and motor-freighted to me. It is a 12- to 18-hour ride by interstate highways, something like your M4, as an example.

It is great for me to see how someone else uses Sketchup in much the same way, as the first means of getting to the CNC production step.

Now, please, show me your alternate solution to the Kelly Davis open-tread stairs.