SPIRAL STAIRCASE RAILING

victoria

Hi-

I'm learning to build stairs (Mike Tadros' sketchup show #38 is the method of choice after having tried many different methods)- everything goes great until I go to do the handrail of the spiral staircase-
how do I bend a tube to wrap around instead of having jagged edges?

thanks

victoria

Gaieus

Hi Victoria and welcome!

Is that the book you are talking about or a video? (The only thing I found on Google was actually your post - wow, quite fast indexing!).

numbthumb

This one maybe? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFhmzIcQuHk&feature=related

Edit: Hi, Victoria - there are plugins like FollowMeAndKeep or lines2tubes or TubeAlongPath which can be used for that, at least I think so.
You can find them here:
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=16465&hilit=plugin
http://www.cad-addict.com/2009/07/sketchup-plugins-turn-lines-into-tubes.html

victoria

Hi Gaieus-

it's the go-2-school sketchup videos-

if you google sketchup show #38 you will get the youtube video for building stairs(but not tube railings)
(if that was your question)

Gaieus

OK, so he is starting to draw the handrails at around 5:20 in this video (by the way, Part 2 of #38)

YouTube - The Sketchup Show #38:Create Standard&Spiral Staircases(Pt2)
[flash=480,385:tkeq8t9w]http://www.youtube.com/v/PPcvrd8Oc3I?fs=1&hl=hu_HU[/flash:tkeq8t9w]

Well, in the way he is drawing it, it will always be jagged (his handrail is also jagged and the rails this way will not even match) as you cannot soften transitions between two, separate components, only inside the same editing context. Can you attach your staircase so that we can suggest methods (there could be several actually) how to solve this?

TIG

My 'ExtrudeEdgesByFace' will take a the elliptical cross-section and extrude it along the path - butlike the built-in 'FollowMe' tool it could be prone to 'twisting'.
FAK - 'FollowmeAndKeep' with take the face andkeep it oriented with a constant bottom edge - to get the ellipse 'perpendicular' at the start of the first edge in the path find and install Chris Fullmer's toolset 'Perpendicular_Face_Tools'.

Gaieus

Yes, these could be the solution - however NOT in the way it is shown in the video as the rail parts are inside the components. The whole handrail should be outside so that any kind of tool can be used on the full path AND the parts could be smoothed.

Edson

there was an interesting discussion about the topic here.

Howard leslie

Victoria,
This may be of interest - SpiralStairCaseBuilder
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=289&t=29484
....................
A DC to help you model spiral staircases and handrailing.
Whole staircase can be modelled in minutes.
Includes PDF Tutorial with some Top Tips
.....................
Hope this helps

Regards
Howard Leslie