Hello,
I’m still looking for a good plugin for stair building. Not necessarily a free one, but a tool that is flexible and offers opportunities to design stairs with quarter turns the way they did it in the old days…
I’m guessing a lot of people would be equally interested.
I suspect the problem comes from the fact that there are so many variables. To start with, different countries and different development categories have their own rules. It would be really hard to write an algorithm that dealt with all the possibilities. But the field is wide open for anyone who wants to try!
What have you looked at so far? Just for design purposes, or actual nuts and bolts making the parts?
FlexTools is just design oriented and dynamic component based. Medeek Wall is construction oriented, and doesn’t use dynamic components. Those are the only two I have much experience with.
By “quarter turn” do you mean “winders”, i.e. pie-shaped stair treads? Depending where you are, there are complex code issues that could be codified into a plugin or dynamic component, but it would be quite an undertaking. I mostly work that kind of stuff out in 2D first, and then build it in SketchUp.
2 Likes
Do you have some pictures of what you are hoping to accomplish?
this kind of things:
2 Likes
Oh, yeah! That’s like all the work in this book:
Incredible stuff. I don’t see a plugin or parametric component doing this easily because every one is so custom.
3 Likes
Mike, that’s what I wanna do. Do you know what specific plugins have been used for this? Or was it just created “manually”?
1 Like
Nice!!
RTCCool, indeed, much is custom work. On the other hand, there are lots of tips and tricks and tools and plugins in SU, and if you know those that you need, it means you can save lots of time.
Like Robert said…
Looking at Jack’s stair model I think it’s not UK Building Regulations compliant…
Sure that diagram above makes it appear simple but I assure you it’s not!
1 Like
What I have seen of Dutch stairs, they are often almost ladders 
2 Likes
We happen to ive in a small country.
2 Likes
That’s crazy talk…
Samba stairs they call them in these parts.
2 Likes
It’s a great book. I got it back in the '80’s, but it’s a reprint of a book from around 1900, I think, and it’s full of timeless information. Some of the geometry diagrams are mind blowing!
2 Likes
In a few cases, True Bend might do the trick bending a straight stair, but your example illustration is even more complicated than that.
1 Like
US Code has reference to alternating tread stairs, but not a lot of places that it can be used.
1 Like
