Stringer as dynamic component

florin · 23 Sept 2010, 17:55

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.

rail-01.skp

florin · 23 Sept 2010, 17:57

Here is another rail style that is true to its real use.

rail-02.skp

Dave R · 23 Sept 2010, 18:11

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.

florin · 23 Sept 2010, 22:22

Hiding the edge is a great idea. I'll try it tonight. Thanks.

Dave R · 23 Sept 2010, 22:35

Remember to delete the faces, too. Otherwise you'll still be able to see the seams.

Howard leslie · 26 Sept 2010, 22:16

Florin / Jeff,
Have you seen this DC, StairCaseBuilder
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=289&t=18545
..........
This DC may give you some help / ideas
..........
Regards
Howard L'

florin · 1 Oct 2010, 00:26

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?

stair-stringer.skp

jeff hammond · 1 Oct 2010, 01:00

@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)

florin · 1 Oct 2010, 01:49

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.

florin · 1 Oct 2010, 01:53

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?

jeff hammond · 1 Oct 2010, 02:02

@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.

florin · 1 Oct 2010, 02:15

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.

Dave R · 1 Oct 2010, 10:24

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.

stair-stringer.skp

florin · 2 Oct 2010, 00:15

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.