Stringer as dynamic component
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How would you go about building a stair stringer as a dynamic component? Riser and step count matter. I've tried but failed.
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I think I would break the stringer into a several smaller components. One for the bottom, one for the intermediate part of the run and possibly one for the top if it is different from the intermediate ones. Then the set up would involve just adding copies of the intermediate component and moving the top component to the end of the run if you have it.
The green in the exploded view is my back face color. I deleted faces where the components meet and hid the edges so when the entire thing is assembled, it looks continuous as in the front stringer.
In the interest of time, I did not make a DC of this.
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when dynamic components first came out, i was excited to finally have a stair component drawn in the way i build stairs which would be adjustable in height.
unfortunately, i never made it because it doesn't seem worth it to me to learn how to make DCs first in order to make my stairs.. i wish the implementation of dynamic components was a lot more intuitive and easy to use (and i think it could be)
in my case, i'd need the following--
-- enter the overall height then the DC divides the stringer with a max riser height of 7 1/8"
-- tread depth is typically going to be 11" for me but i'd like to make that adjustable
-- i want to enter the thickness of the material that i will use for the tread which in turn will be subtracted from the bottom step (ie- if i'm using 2by material for the treads and each stair is 7" rise then the bottom stair will be 5 1/2" instead of 7)
-- enter the width of the material for the stringer (i usually use 2x10s for the stringers but i'll sometimes use a 2x12 instead due to cost restrictions etc ... i know that sounds backwards but you'll just have to believe me
probably a few more things that i'm not thinking about right now..
anyway, if someone comes into this thread to help you out and actually walk you through designing the DC, i'm going to tag along as well
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Jeff has a good point. There are a lot of variables that need to be incorporated to make the stringer component useful in a lot of situations. It is probably easier to just draw the stringer manually. There are online stringer calculators that would make it easy enough to work out the dimensions you need. There's also a plugin or two that would do the math and layout the stairs for you and at least get you started.
I don't have much use for a DC of a stringer but I would be interested in how one is constructed that satisfies all of those things Jeff mentions.
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fwiw, using the divide command in a line's context menu does wonders for making stairs in sketchup.. it's a quick way to calculate how many stairs you'll need without exceeding a certain riser height.. after that, draw a tread at the desired depth then use copy/move.
in this video, i typically would be finished with my stair calculation after 45 seconds but i went ahead and finished it up..
generally, i design and build and don't have to submit detailed drawing but on those occasions where i do, that's when i want the DC.. it's pretty time consuming to do a detailed drawing showing all the risers/treads/joints/supports[flash=660,405:22kl0kc3]http://www.youtube.com/v/K0ypNHskZD4?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0&color1=0x2b405b&color2=0x6b8ab6&border=1[/flash:22kl0kc3]
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Excellent video, Jeff.
You make everything look so easy. -
It is surprising that most stair components online are both limited and unrealistic. I cannot use them either indoors or outdoors. I talk as a builder.
I thought of building individual risers but how do I get rid of the join lines once component is customized? Do I have to edit each and soften the edges!? That is a hack.
Can you had 'voids'? Can you specify that line intersection behavior (as with solids)?
If I can get these done the rest seems easy. It was rather straightforward to do the rail between posts as dynamic components.
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Florin,
@unknownuser said:
I thought of building individual risers but how do I get rid of the join lines once component is customized? Do I have to edit each and soften the edges!? That is a hack.
Use Hide (Shift+Eraser) not Soften. If the copies are instances of the same component, you need only hide the edges on one. You would also delete the faces as I showed in my example. It is not a hack.
@unknownuser said:
Can you had 'voids'? Can you specify that line intersection behavior (as with solids)?
With the missing faces you won't have "Solid" components but they aren't required for Dynamic Components.
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Hiding the edge is a great idea. I'll try it tonight. Thanks.
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Remember to delete the faces, too. Otherwise you'll still be able to see the seams.
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Florin / Jeff,
Have you seen this DC, StairCaseBuilder
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=289&t=18545
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This DC may give you some help / ideas
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Regards
Howard L' -
I found some time for sketchup today. Thanks to Dave R's suggestion, here is a stringer that expands by adding steps. Please feel free to make improvements.
Howard Leslie: The plugin you are referring to has some great pictures. I'll take a look.
The stringer does what I need by having standard dimensions (11 run, 7 riser).
Here is something interesting, and once again sketchup disappoints when it comes to more serious stuff. A regular deck stair has three stringers. If I create a component with three stringers, where two are identical copies of the first, only the first one responds to the scale command. I'm no expert at all, but when I hit such snags, I feel that sketchup is a mere kids play.
Why would sketchup have no parameters applied to angles, to orientation (such as flip along) and many other actions that are so common in the design process?
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@florin said:
I found some time for sketchup today. Thanks to Dave R's suggestion, here is a stringer that expands by adding steps. Please feel free to make improvements.
Howard Leslie: The plugin you are referring to has some great pictures. I'll take a look.
that's not a plugin.. it's a DC..
and howard, that thing does almost everything i need it to do.. surely enough for me to see what you did and i'll be able to apply the necessary modifications.. thanks a ton for sharing that!
@unknownuser said:
Here is something interesting, and once again sketchup disappoints when it comes to more serious stuff. A regular deck stair has three stringers. If I create a component with three stringers, where two are identical copies of the first, only the first one responds to the scale command. I'm no expert at all, but when I hit such snags, I feel that sketchup is a mere kids play.
Why would sketchup have no parameters applied to angles, to orientation (such as flip along) and many other actions that are so common in the design process?
to scale all the components at once, you have to go inside (edit) the component prior to scaling.. it's a decent implementation of having the ability to scale a single instance of a component or all instances at once..
also, sketchup does have flip along commands.. it will show up in the right-click context menu or Edit->(entity)->Flip Along..
not sure what you're trying to do but moving stuff around/changing orientation etc is pretty easy in sketchup (imo) -
Jeff,
I went a second time and checked the link before your post - so I edited out the 'not a component' part. I'm surprised you still found my original post. Sorry, I'm exhausted here and ready to call it a day.
Regarding scaling. When inside the parent (wrapper) component and copy the stringer, the copied components do not scale. Consider this picture.
The following picture shows that the second component is bound to the same parent component.
I definitely will investigate the DC StairCaseBuilder. It looks awesome.
Regarding the flip-along. What I'd like is to have the ability to say about some rail that it is a left hand side or a right hand site. The design of the rail demands that. I'd like this to be made available as a parameter chosen thru the component window by the user as apposed to design time. Do I make sense? It's as if you have a shoe as a component and want to specify the 'left/right' component parameter resulting on flipping the component.
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O Jeff. I found the answer. The copied component needs to be renamed. So instance names need to be unique.
What if I want to stretch the component horizontally, can strings be added dynamically?
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@florin said:
Do I make sense? It's as if you have a shoe as a component and want to specify the 'left/right' component parameter resulting on flipping the component.
oh.. ok
yeah, i'm not sure if that's possible.. you'd have to mirror it manually using either or flip along..but then again, i know very little about creating dynamic components so hopefully someone will come in the thread and prove us wrong
[edit] thinking out loud here... can you specify scale amount in dynamic components? if so, make an option for -1 which will in effect flip it along the designated axis.
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Can't do the scale thing.
The sketchup appeal (for me) is the ability to help customers visualize the end result of the project.
The second plus should be the ability to reuse components by modifying parameters. Sketchup appears weak on this second need.
Yet I'm still discovering this thing, so there might be quite a few tricks out there.
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Copying the stringer works fine I just renamed the two copies. You can space them as desired either manually or you could make that adjust dynamically.
As far as reuse of components is concerned, SketchUp is very strong indeed. I do it all the time. This 1-1/2"-long round head wood screw started started as a 2-1/2"-long flat head wood screw. Of course I still have the flat head screw now in several different lengths. The screw started as a #8 screw but I have #6 and #12 screws as well as a 1/4" lag screw all from reusing the component I initially made. This doesn't seem like a weak point in my book.
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I guess I could improve the manner I try to make a point.
Suppose we have the stringer above. The stringer is made of repeated segments when scaled along the red axis. Is it possible to scale the component on the green axes so that the stringer repeats horizontally every 16 inches?
The goal is to have a deck stair that satisfies variable height and width. Therefore, you can have, for example 13 steps vertically and 5 stringers horizontally (making it a 60" wide staircase).
In the example above, in order to get the second copy of the stringer scale, I had to rename it. But renaming it, disables the ability to scale the staircase on the green axis.
There is no way I bash sketchup, especially as I am as green as it can be, and have limited time to give to learning it. Certainly, as far as dc are concerned, there is very few documentation that goes beyond the basics which is a shame.
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