Shifting focus from the exterior to the interior of a building, this tutorial illustrates how to model and position stairs accurately. From creating reference planes to applying the stair command, this article provides a step-by-step guide to designing an L-shaped stair and modifying parameters for an entry feature stair.
Key Insights
- The article explains how to model stairs in a building by first creating reference planes, which can be offset one foot from the faces of the walls.
- It demonstrates how to position the stairs appropriately by using dimensions from a grid line, aiming to have the stairs hit the second floor and create a landing in a specific corner.
- Lastly, it highlights the importance of adjusting the parameters of the stairs and the associated railing, to ensure the design aligns with the intended architectural feature.
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Now that we've wrapped up most of the exterior, we're going to go ahead and shift focus and start working on the interior of the building. The first thing we're going to do is model the stairs. And to do that, what I want to do is I just want to create a couple of reference planes.
And we're going to do one that's going to be about a foot away from this face, and a foot away from this face. And to do that easily, we can activate the reference plane command, RP for that keyboard shortcut. And then we can change this offset in the options bar from zero to one.
And then I can just draw it along these faces and see how it's going to be one foot away. If for some reason it's showing up on the other side, like say you drew it from right to left instead of left to right, you can just hit spacebar and it'll toggle which side it goes on. We want to have it here.
And then I'll draw another one down this way. And you can see that one's going into the wall, and I want it outside. So this will be the basis for the right edge of my stair going up this way, and up that way.
And the next thing we need to do is we want to make sure we place this where we want it. And really, when I say place it where we want it, what I'm referring to is where the stair starts. And we can do a dimension from this grid line here.
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And so I'm going to use 13 feet. And so that can be another reference plane; this one will just be placed arbitrarily first, and then we'll take that dimension to the grid line, and we'll make that 13 feet.
And this could change depending on how we want this to sit. The key is that we want it to hit the second floor somewhere over here. And then we want to have a landing in this corner.
So it's going to be an L-shaped stair. And so this starting point is pretty flexible. Now we'll go to the Stair command.
And we want to make sure we have the actual run width set the way we want it to be. And this looks good for four feet; that should be fine. And then what we'll do is double-check that we're going from Level One to Level Two.
And then we can start it. And so I can pick this point as my starting point. And remember, these are going to be defaulted based on the center.
And so if I were to use that point right off the bat, then it's not going to work out so well. So I could actually change it to have it be the run right or left. And I'm going to go with right.
I always get this wrong, but we'll see if we got it this time. And it looks like we did. And so I can run it out.
And this is where it gets a little tricky; you need to kind of have an idea or a plan in place on when you want to turn the stair. And so I'm going to have it run out and create 10 risers for me here. Maybe 11.
Let's do 11 this way. And then I can have it run out and do the additional on this side. And you can see how it'll set us up to a point where we're going to be pretty close to where we were planning on having that second-floor edge.
And that gives us our stair. So it goes up 11, and then 12. And what's cool about this is we can easily adjust it.
So I'll finish the sketch. And then what I like to do is I like to go into 3D and take a look at it and see how everything kind of panned out. And we got incredibly lucky there.
Normally, it's not that fortunate. We might have to do a little bit of floor modifying to get that to work a little better. But this is pretty close to what we're looking for.
And it's nice having a curtain wall box on the front because then we don't have to do a section box because we can see it pretty clearly here. But this looks good. So this is the first step in getting those stairs modeled in the right location and exactly where we want it.
The next step is going to be to modify the parameters of this stair and this railing to match for an entry feature stair.
