SNAKES & LADDERS

So one of the April fools gags this year was about the Stairs & Railings tools that have once more failed to arrive with the new release of Revit.  Everyone moans about Stairs & Railings and they can be a pain, but the more you use the existing tools the more you find you can achieve.

Over the christmas break I set myself a couple of staircase challenges.  No 1 was the helical stair under the pyramid in the courtyard of the Louvre.  Three images above are Realistic, Reference Photo & Rendered. 

The railings are the key here.  The round handrail is easy stuff, The glass is a continuous rail with joints formed by balusters that are just slivers of glass lying in the same plane. Gives the effect of a series of curved panels with very little effort.  The triangular undercarriage of the stair is also created as a railing with a custom profile.

Final sheet is from our office server Revit library.  I've created a "collections" folder with a file for each category of families, and I just drop in there whatever I make or find so people can copy/paste whatever they find useful.  It's a lot more user-friendly than browsing through folders opening & closing families till you find the one you want.  I also means I can set up explanatory sheets like the one above, or maybe a sheet on office standard naming conventions.

Flushed with success I went on to tackle and open-tread steel staircase which also uses more than one railing.  The brackets are balusters in a baluster-per-tread railing which is separate from the "real" railing.  The steel channel stringers are part of this second railing.  Used a custom nosing for the open treads and that was it.  Will get round to rendering this one day.

In conclusion though, better stairs & railings are still high up on my wish-list.  Next year maybe ...