Curved Staircases
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I have created a video on you tube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQ94u6bpLq0 -
that would save me like 3 hours... or maybe more.
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You must be pretty fast. It was taking me the better part of a day to draw stairs. Perhaps because of the amount of detail that I was interested in.
Did you view the You Tube video? What did you think of it? Do you have any suggestions or comments on what I have done so far? Have you been to my website?
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I have been to the site, but I was looking at the cabinet program... you should have your website in your signature so people check out your great plugins from where ever they might be reading your posts.
I watched the video and it seems really easy to use and straight forward. It will be a great time saver and make for a cleaner group of geometry as well. I don't have any thing to add, it seemed really straight forward.
As for time to build the stairs, it doesn't usually take too long, especially for regular curves.
- I draw everything out in a 2D plan view.
- Then separate into a few groups; stringers, rails and steps.
- I push pull the steps up to their desired riser heights.
- Then I push pull the stringer up to the height of the top landing stair.
- Then I use Curve Shearing plugin to cut out the stringer top line, then copy that line down the depth of the stringer.
- Repeat for each side of the stringer.
- Then intersect the planes with the Curve Sheared lines.
- Delete the unneeded faces.repeat for each stringer.
- Then I use the "From Contours" native SU land drape tool or Fredo's Curviloft to make a top and bottom side of the stringer.
- Repeat for each stringer.
- I used to repeat that process for the rail but now I use Instant Rail and it gives me all the kool options and details for the railings.
- then I push pull some bullnose and call it done.
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I've got the cleanup working to simulate stringer routing for housed stringers.
I'm going to add a configuration variable so that you can adjust the height of the housed stringer. There may be times when you want the housed stringer higher - so more of the stringer would be visible above the treads.Next step is to see what I can do about bullnosing the treads. I'll add the bullnose radius to the input box.
After that I'm going to look at flaring the treads. I'm thinking that a progressive flair of a flair amount like 1/2" might work well. Say you want to flare the bottom 6 treads - you would end up with the bottom tread flared out by 3", the one before at 2 1/2" etc.
Then add straightening of the outside stringer at top, bottom or both and optional straightening of the inside stringer.
There is also the idea of what I call a notch - this is where the stair starts out between 1 or 2 walls and part way down the stair one or both walls are now only below the stair - allowing for spindle railing. In this case the stair gets wider by the appropriate amount based on the thickness of the wall and the type of stringer.
Any comments?
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Looks good. Sorry, you're so advanced at this I couldn't add anything.
Kris "Instant Rail"? Is this "Instant Wall" or has Chuck refined the rail functions???
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Instant Fence/Rail is different... but the same. different plugin but same basic features just many presets and few more/different options.
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My only comment Garry, is Kick Ass!
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I call the top of the stringer that continues under the floor the heel. There is now an option for "has heel". I've also added in tread bullnose.
I've added building code information into the defaults.txt file. Minimum Rise, Maximum Rise, Minimum Run, Maximum Run, Minimum Stair Width etc. The defaults are currently set to Canadian National Building code but can be modified for your own area.
The stair maker plugin uses these values to adjust things like number of Risers so that the stair will still meet code.
I've also added in more 0 value settings. If one of the following 3 values is set to 0 then it will be calculated. So you only need 2 of these: 1) degrees, radius, Run at walk line.
I've also added in a setting in the defaults.txt file to finish off housed stringer(s) at a certain height above the floor. I set it to 12.7mm in the picture.
You can run the Stair Maker a second time set as if you are creating a handrail (0 riser and tread thickness, housed inside stringer and no outside stringer ). Adjust the radius by the thickness of your stairs inside stringer. Adjust the thickness of the inside stringer (handrail) to the width of the stair minus the thickness of both stair stringers. This creates a square tube that can be edited and pulled straight downwards ( on blue axis ) to form a finished stair bottom.
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"I've added building code information into the defaults.txt file. Minimum Rise, Maximum Rise, Minimum Run, Maximum Run, Minimum Stair Width etc. The defaults are currently set to Canadian National Building code but can be modified for your own area. "
awesome.
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Wow.... impressive!!! I'm still trying to learn how to build a cabinet efficiently. Lol!!
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Calvin,
Did you by any chance go to my web site? CabMaker32.com.
I am a big advocate on the 32 mmm construction system. You can build very good looking cabinets using these guidelines.
I can also give you many reasons why you will become very efficient. This system is scaleable. So if you are a one man operation or a much larger company you would have to make some tooling choices.
Anyway - if you are interested - we can continue this. We can also take it off line if you wish.
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I have one type of flare working. I call this the continuous flare where every tread is flared by the same amount. Set Flare treads equal to the number of treads on the stair and Set the Flare amount to what you are interested in.
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that looks great.
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I've been busy working on handrail and deciding how to handle it.
I'm thinking of having a drop down list for handrail styles. So just pick one.
Additionally - I'm thinking to add a new handrail profile to the list - you provide the model with a handrail profile and set the top center of the handrail at the origin and select it before running the stair builder plugin. The plugin would then ask you to give a name for the new handrail profile ( you could cancel at that time ). If you provide a name then I would save the profile to disk using the name as part of the file name. Next startup I will read in the file names and add it to the list.
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Here's a better closeup of the handrail. You can see that I have started with a reasonably complex one to make sure that it works.
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Sounds perfect.
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I have now finished the bullnosing of the treads. This needed to be automated so that the routing of the housed stringer would be correct.
I am deciding which features will be offered in a free version of the Stair Builder. I will then continue adding more features to a pro version which will have a cost associated with it.
I am currently considering having a free version for basic curved stairs. The features that will be left out of the free version and included in the pro version are:
- profiled handrails
- adjusting tread nosing, thickness and amount dadoed into stringer, no bullnosing
- adjusting riser thickness and amount dadoed into tread
- stringer thickness
- flared treads - progressive and continuous
- No dadoing of treads and risers into stringer.
Please provide feedback on what I am considering.
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I want to say that if there isn't any interest in a free version of the stair builder (meaning no comments) then I will concentrate just on the pro version.
I've built the treads this way - using an outline for the top and bottom faces and taking a copy of the tread profile and scaling, rotating and moving into place. The tread data then fills in a polygon mesh - and we have a tread.
I had been using Fredo6 round over - but this strategy will allow me to add different tread profiles - I will not be limited to just round over.
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I'm interested in the free version... But, I'll most likely being going with the paid plugin.
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