Can't connect exterior stairs to landing

[MikeBaldus]

Hello,

 

I know this should be simple but I can't make it work and I haven't found any help in the reference manual.

 

In the attached plan file I have spent much time placing and sizing the landing and I don't want to move it (changing height would be fine) because everything is a really tight fit.  The upper set of stairs must pass down beside a 1st story roof overhang with gutter (so I can't move closer to house), and at a normal code width they almost peek out from beside the 2nd story wall (so I can't move farther away from house).

 

The lower stairs must miss the fence that hides the AC units.

 

The upper stairs seem to be connected to the 2nd story deck platform and the mid-level landing OK (they may not be though and I don't know how to tell for certain).

 

I can't get the lower stairs to connect to the landing, nor do I know how to convince the program that both sets of stairs are part of one run of stairs.  Any help will be appreciated!

 

Gratefully,

 

Mike

300 Franklin-Proposed.plan

[solver]

Take a look at this thread.

 

https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/topic/14826-stair-layout/

 

Reply back if it does not help.

[MikeBaldus]

Thanks again Eric.

 

Well I studied your helpful post, but I can't see what I need to do to make it apply to my case.  It definitely pushed me into new territory though!

 

I did draw a closed polyline and positioned it directly over my landing (not being sure how that might help, since the stairs won't snap to my landing and the program ought to recognize a landing to snap to better than a polyline).  So I think I'm barking up the wrong tree there.

 

Your tutorial's approach is that of knowing what you want for stair sections, creating them to suit, then joining things together.  To do it you use a number of tools and methods I'm new to.  Which element of the tutorial should I be focusing on?

 

BTW: Am I wrong in assuming that my upper deck, upper stair section and my landing are OK and not causing a problem?

[solver]

Noticed your upper and lower walls are not aligned.

 

 

Try drawing from the 2nd floor down. Hold the right mouse button as you drag the stairs out.

 

Copy the landing to the 2nd floor. Draw stairs down from the deck to the landing, then from the landing to the ground.

 

Tip: Draw a CAD line where the lower stair section hits the ground. Copy/Paste Hold Position on the 2nd floor. The lower stair section will snap to this.

 

Or, do everything in reverse, drawing up from the bottom to the landing, then up from the landing to a CAD line representing the deck edge.

 

 

Stairs just take practice. I did a bunch of plans with just stairs when first learning the program.

 

 

 

[solver]

Copy the Deck to the first floor. Set its Absolute Floor to what is was when located on the second floor, and set the room type back to Deck.

 

You should be able to draw stairs from the bottom up and have them connect.

[MikeBaldus]

How do I copy decks or landings from one floor to another?

 

And they behave differently - when I select the landing I get the whole thing, when I select the deck I get either a section of railing or the Room.  If I get the Room the Edit bar has no Copy/Paste tool.

 

I noticed when attempting to copy the landing "to the 2nd floor" as you first suggested, that there is a 2nd tool: "Copy and Paste in Place".  Is that somehow related to the process of copying a landing to another floor?

 

Let me go back to: How do I copy the deck to the 1st floor?  And do you mean I should place it at the same XY location as the existing 2nd floor deck?  Actually I guess it would be the same Z location also since you said to set Absolute Floor to match the 2nd floor deck...

[solver]

1 minute ago, MikeBaldus said:

How do I copy decks or landings from one floor to another?

 

Copy the 2 outside walls that define the deck. Cut/Paste Hold Position on the first floor.

 

3 minutes ago, MikeBaldus said:

I noticed when attempting to copy the landing "to the 2nd floor" as you first suggested, that there is a 2nd tool: "Copy and Paste in Place".  Is that somehow related to the process of copying a landing to another floor?

 

Copy/Paste In Place does just what it says. Example. You have a porch where you want 3 columns, one on each corner and one centered. Place 1 column at a corner and adjust as required. Copy/Reflect About the center of the porch room to place the far corner column. Copy/Paste In Place while it's still selected, then use the Center tool to center it on the porch room center.

 

 

[MikeBaldus]

Thanks for helping me understand a potential use for the Copy/Paste in Place tool.

 

It took me quite awhile to find the Cut/Paste Hold Position tool!  It wasn't available in the Edit toolbar or the right-click menu, I finally found it in the main Edit menu.

 

So I did that, but with very unexpected results - see the screenshot. To clarify, the Cut/Paste Hold Position worked beautifully, the trouble wasn't until I tried to move the deck up.

 

I admit that as soon as I attempted to set the 1st floor deck Absolute Floor Height to match the 2nd floor deck, something happened with Ceiling Height and Floor Above Height, I doctored and re-doctored. I started from scratch after that and those heights still don't want to cooperate. I tried leaving the default check-marks, removing them, and combinations (remove the Floor Height default check-mark first, edit the number, tab out to watch what happens). But as soon as I set the Floor Height to 128 3/4" I have a negative ceiling height, and manually raising the height gave me the odd results in the screenshot.  Any approach I took left me no option but to manually set artificial heights for those other two.  So I set arbitrary heights for those, figuring they shouldn't be important anyway, but I kept getting weird results like the screenshots.

 

Notice BTW that it pulled the Bilco cellar doors up with it .  

 

I also tried deleting all stairs first, but per 2nd Shot it did the same thing (plus dropped my landing to the ground).

 

Since I already had a good 2nd floor deck, landing and upper stair section (I think), is this exercise an attempt to trick the program into understanding that all 4 elements (2 stair sections, a landing and the deck) are simply one staircase?

 

I finally took some earlier advice of yours and just manually built the stairs. That was good learning exercise too, because of the many options the program offers within the Stairs dialog. I made mistakes that moved my carefully placed landing at times, due to not having noticed which option was selected - Lock Top vs. Lock Bottom.  I'm still trying to figure out why the programmers decided to make Top Height be the top of the highest step instead of the landing or floor platform.  No carpenter does stair math that way - you go from platform to platform.  But I finally realized they took that odd approach and adjusted my math, and have attached the result.

 

It won't meet your standards 

 

BTW: Yes I did know that my 2nd floor doesn't line up with 1st.  That's because after carefully measuring and re-measuring, I decide that the 2nd floor is not the same North-South dimension as the 1st floor!  Well it's a 130 year old building,  and had a major fire on the 2nd floor around 1900 (bad enough that the entire roof structure was replaced).  So I decided to just draw it as I found it and call it close enough.

 

For all this exterior drawing I only need good enough to show the permit and local historic district people, so things like the slight gap between the first flight and the landing is passable for my purpose.  Later I certainly hope to have more time to play and learn, but right now the property is costing me $900/month to sit there.

 

Wow, this reply got long!  Sorry.

 

Eric, thank you again for being there to help out!

 

Mike

300 Franklin-Proposed-Alt.plan

[solver]

It looks like you copied instead of cutting the deck.

 

Here are the specs I used when moving it back up.

 

 

Once that was done, and I deleted your stair sections, the new stairs, drawn from the ground up snapped right into position.

 

Sounds like you have what you need, and learned more than you wanted to about stairs. 

[MikeBaldus]

14 minutes ago, solver said:

It looks like you copied instead of cutting the deck.

 

Aargh! Yes, I see now that I didn't look closely enough at your instructions.  I saw the "Copy the 2 outside walls that define the deck" part and didn't notice you said to "Cut/Paste Hold Position".  And in addition to not knowing the "Hold Position" business even existed, I'm pretty sure I've never done a "Cut/Paste" either!  Thanks, these are valuable tips.

 

21 minutes ago, solver said:

Once that was done, and I deleted your stair sections, the new stairs, drawn from the ground up snapped right into position.

 

Ouch, it hurts to hear you could do that with so little effort!  

 

As soon as I get the permit process off the ground and have a little spare time I'm going to play with a copy of the plan to try to duplicate what you described. Even though I was able to do the stair math and manually build the sections (and the program was good enough to let me do it), I was frustrated that it "sort of" recognized that I was building stairs to a landing but it never really "got it".  Both stair dialogues show number of landings as "0".  

 

I seem to do a lot of things the hard way, so I'm looking forward to trying your easier way - and then type myself some good notes!

 

It looks like you picked the arbitrary number of 10' for the "Ceiling Above" height. So I was on the right track there?  Any number that's higher than the height of the railings will work?

 

Mike