Medeek Wall Plugin
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Tutorial 87 - Curved Stairs (9:20 min.)
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I've been working on close stringers for curved stair cases. The circular variety is pretty much figured out but the elliptical variety still needs an instantaneous adjustment to the stringer depth since the pitch angle of the stairs (slope) is constantly changing. The geometry of a 0.9 eccentric ellipse shows off this distortion quite well. I will hit it again tomorrow and see if I can't figure out a more accurate algorithm for these stringers. Sometimes I enjoy a good challenge, but this one has certainly had me scratching my head a few times already.
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Impressive results. Huge timesaver too for users.
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Medeek Wall: Version 4.6.0 - 06.03.2026
- Added a curved “closed” stair option into the stair module.
- Enabled closed stringers for curved (elliptical and circular) stairs.
- Added a separate layer for stair stringers.
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Tutorial 88 - Curved Closed Stairs (5:55 min.)
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After mucking around with the follow me API call and a few other algorithms I decided to strike out on my own yesterday, and with a little help from ChatGPT and quite a few iterations I was able to finally generate the closed helical stringers. Using the same principle and by rotating the profile I am now able to generate a similar mesh for the handrails. These are high poly but it does look great and we now have eliminated the twisting issue that I had never resolved using other methods. So a major step forward.
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Version 4.6.0b - 06.06.2026
- Added handrails to curved stairs.
- Fixed a bug with labels for railing labels with metric templates.
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Version 4.6.1 - 06.06.2026
- Added tread covers, carpet and stair runners for all curved stair assemblies.
- Enabled a “code” clearance envelope for curved (elliptical and circular) stairs.
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Balusters on curved staircases is a bit challenging, I'm not going to lie. My algorithm(s) are mostly working, and I think, as I suggested in my previous postings, I will need to add in some additional (curved stair specific) parameters. At this point I really hate to add more parameters to these already substantially bloated menus. Too many settings and options tend to overwhelm the casual or new user, but at the same time we need enough controls or knobs to fully adjust these assemblies, its a bit of a trade off I guess. As the Japanese say "Shikata ga nai" (仕方がない).
This screenshot is of a "circular" curved staircase with 1/2" square balusters and baluster shoes. As you can see the baluster spacing is not quite right for either side (inner and outer handrails). To get exactly 2, 3 or 4 balusters per tread one will need to carefully and probably iteratively adjust the spacing. Since these arc lengths won't be nice even numbers the exact spacing number will be some fractional value. I've got some ideas on this to make things a bit easier for the user to compute these exact spacings but I need to experiment with it further.
Its funny how when I start down one of these rabbit holes I don't usually don't know the full solution to the problem or even fully understand the problem itself. But as I slowly unravel and work my way through one of these problems it ultimately becomes clear and then along the way I seem to always find better ways to address the problems that I encounter.
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Version 4.6.2 - 06.10.2026
- Added balusters and baluster shoes for all curved stair assemblies.
- Added separate baluster spacing, offsets and quantities for inner and outer handrails of curved stair assemblies.
With circular stairs it is possible to carefully control the spacing of the balusters so that a specific number of balusters lands on each tread (two on the inner and three on the outer). However with elliptical stairs the tread arc length may vary significantly so this may or may not be as controllable. I may need to come up with a different way to space balusters on elliptical stairs.
Note that in the second screenshot where the balusters are attached to the closed stringer this is not an issue.
Each side can be adjusted separately with the addition of the six new parameters within the Curved Stair Options sub-menu. This level of granularity is required for curved stairs at the expense of making the menus a bit longer.
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