The more I fiddle to create a glass staircase...


Keith_K
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Mick,

HDA has very few options for stairs, so I had to do what I had to do.

Keith seemed to indicate that he only wanted railings where they were absolutely necessary, that's why there is no rail on the left side lower stair and the upper stair right side (especially if there is a window there).  With HDA, embedding the stair in the wall is the only way to eliminate those particular rail sections.  :)

 

In your pic, I see that you eliminated my soffit newel on the left back of the lower landing. I put it there because I thought it was necessary for attaching the glass rail?

 

When experimenting with someone's plan, lots of times it is surprising to learn something new.   HDA does not have the option to remove stair ballusters  (you either have an entire rail or you don't have a rail at all).   Today I learned something NEW!!  :P

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Hi Jo , yes I deleted everything of your rail , but was only 1/2 done redoing when I did the pic , see below , my personal preference is to have a 1/2 post ( or full) at the wall , I don't like the Railing just screwed into the wall , there is no "sense" of structure/strength.

 

I didn't realise  HDA didn't have the ability to turn off wall rails so the "embedding" makes sense..... Another one for your HDA Tip and Workaround  Book  :)

 

Careful with that experimenting in other plans , you might want to upgrade !   actually it is the experimenting/helping here that has taught me tonnes as I don't always have a project of my own to learn on , so I tacke an interest problem here and try and figure it out....

 

post-25-0-05171300-1421371595_thumb.jpg

 

got to go back and play in the newer version now since in Pro10 I got it to work.....

 

M.

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Well, I have just spent 4 hours fiddling with the stairs and gave given up.  I even tried placing the railings on the outside of the staircase the result of which almost made me wet my pants laughing.

 

I think the time has come for me to raise a ticket with HD Support to see if they can come up with a solution.

 

Jo-Ann, I couldn't find smoked glass anywhere in the HD library :( and where are the "material definition" and "texture" wotsits of which you speak?  I have filled the style of the floor as hexagon tiles but my camera view still shows the floor as looking like a big sheet of lino with no tile shape definition at all.

 

Thank you both for trying.  I'll post anything that HDS come up with.

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funny long time since I heard someone refer to a wotsit :)   try page 593 of your manual , but usually with the material def. tool , you can click and open the material and change attributes in the DBX.

 

I have the issue posted at chieftalk ,and don't don't feel bad ,even the gurus there can't figure it out ....128 views ,12 downloads and 2 answers , one being Eric (solver) ,but have a look here ,Scott may have a possible solution , he thinks the land rail must be different from the stair railing so they don't auto join and go all crazy . I was going to post it up to TS too , so if we both do maybe they will work on it.

 

https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/index.php?/topic/3483-landing-rails-falling-too/

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Keith,

As you know, materials or textures are just something you add to an object  (a wall or soffit, for example).

 

Add a grey color to a soffit.  With the 3d window active, grab the rainbow icon and click on the grey soffit.  In the window that opens, you can now alter it's transparency and it's color lightness or darkness.  Ta Da!  You now have 'smoked' glass!

Your stone wall texture size (of the stones) can be altered by changing the values of the X/Y numbers, too.

 

Try experimenting!  It's fun!

 

Mick,

New pic looks great!  I like seeing a bottom rail.  HDA does not allow selection of an individual staircase rail.  If you choose to not have a left rail, then the entire staircase structure will no longer have a left rail!

 

Quote:

it is the experimenting/helping here that has taught me tonnes as I don't always have a project of my own to learn on , so I tacke an interest problem here and try and figure it out....M.

 


DITTO!

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Hi Jo  doesn't HDA have the ability to treat stair case sections independently? maybe it helps me choose them separately ? but a railing running in the same direction tends to link together with the next one as HD "sees" railings as "walls" which was why I tried the break wall tool ,which works kinda ok in V10 but is still a bear in V15.

 

post-25-0-56433100-1421770953_thumb.jpg

 

 

Hmmm that's not good Keith but they are busy trying to push out X7 , public beta (with SSA ) comes out today , with the full version next month apparently. I had hopes they would have some tips, did you try the two different types of rails trick ? ie sloping rail must be different from anything horizontal....

 

Mick

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Thanks again for trying to help me, folks. I agree with Mick's comment on the CA forum that this must be a bug that needs fixing. However, Support have ignored my ticket. It's 11 days now since I submitted it so they either haven't seen it or think that it's not worth responding to. Maybe at some stage in the distant future the ticket will be flagged as not responded to. Or maybe pigs will fly first. :angry: In the meantime I've resorted to a bog-standard, boring staircase made of timber and common-or-garden newels and stuff.

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HD sees Railings as Walls ,so the only thing that worked for me was the Wall Break Tool to separate the landing and Stair Railings but it took some fiddling around.

 

Did you try the trick of making the landing railing different from the stair Railing eg make it 65mm in stead of the 50mm ?

M.

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Thanks again for trying to help me, folks. I agree with Mick's comment on the CA forum that this must be a bug that needs fixing. However, Support have ignored my ticket. It's 11 days now since I submitted it so they either haven't seen it or think that it's not worth responding to. Maybe at some stage in the distant future the ticket will be flagged as not responded to. Or maybe pigs will fly first. :angry: In the meantime I've resorted to a bog-standard, boring staircase made of timber and common-or-garden newels and stuff.

I've never gone more than two business days without receiving a reply from Support.  I don't think they do e-mail.  Did you make sure to send it in to their Support Center?

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That was also my experience previously, Katalyst777 which is why I was so puzzled that I had received no e-mail notification of the ticket being responded to.

 

Rather than re-type the whole saga and resend the plan/attachments I suggested that they look at this thread and have a link to it. I have just logged on to Support and saw that there were no outstanding tickets under my name. So I clicked on the ticket I had raised to find that it had been replied to by way of me being told that having to read the topic and access the plan was too long winded and contained too much information for them to handle so I should write it all all over again and open a new ticket with details of the problem, plan and other attachments.  The ticket was closed immediately thereafter without me being aware of the reply or the closure. Are e-mails not sent any longer when a ticket is responded to?

 

I'll give some thought as to whether I'll bother raise another ticket about the bug.

 

p.s. Jo-Ann, that second staircase is even more stunning than your first. :) The only criticism (for want of a better word) I have is that you have made a full railing around the stairwell opening on the upper level.  The wall that was drawn between where the last set of risers meets the upper floor and the balcony rail on the left is a support wall for concrete roof panels.  That said, you are far more proficient at using this software in its many forms than I will ever be and I know that, no matter how hard I try, I will never be able to emulate what you have drawn.

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That actually doesn't sound unreasonable, they have a separate Support Center from this forum for a reason so asking for the information makes sense.  As for no longer sending e-mails, I can't speak to that because I always just sign in to check a reply.  I don't usually wait for email notification because I am pretty sure my e-mail filters out most automated messages like that.

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That's what I thought should happen but when I right click on it I didn't get the expected option to extract (see image below).  I ran a Windows update on Saturday night.  I wonder whether this has done something to prevent the option coming up?

 

post-52-0-86763300-1422892102_thumb.jpg
 

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Thanks Mick.  I'll download that later.

I managed to extract the plan using Windows Explorer and now have it sitting in my plan file with all the others.  Jo-Ann mentioned then copying it to the castle plan but as far as I am aware you can't copy things from one plan to the other.  I then thought that maybe an architectural block saved to the library would work but I can't make one of dem damn dings either.

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Thanks, Jo-Ann. Typical woman!  Always has an answer! :wub:

 

However there seems to be slips between cup and lip.  I did as you suggested and copied from your plan to mine but, for some reason the item shrunk in the wash and the scale was very small when I pasted it to my plan ready to move to the correct position.  I had to do some dragging/resizing to get it to fit correctly

 

post-52-0-70672700-1423064240_thumb.jpg

 

Once this was done I had a wee look at the result with the camera.  Oh my!  Something has stolen a few newels and balusters!  :o

 

post-52-0-89761500-1423064283_thumb.jpg

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I am now as bored as you are with this subject but thank you for trying to teach something to one of the great unwashed unteachables.

 

I have now changed the staircase back to a bog standard, boring, creativity suppressing HP Pro 2015 timber creation.

 

I am also bored to tears and temperamentally frustrated to the back teeth with my efforts to tell the system that I don't want newels under the handrail on the wall on the right hand side but that it should be newel free just as it is on the left hand side so it can just stay as it blerry well is.

 

K

 

post-52-0-72845000-1423404472_thumb.jpg

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Hi Keith,

The new stairwell layout is nice looking.

 

If you still want to play around with the other design, I redid it in metric (US unit/measurement is probably why the other one was shrunken?).

 

You can always save your current plan 'save as' and then play in the new plan with the older stairwell design.

That way you can have both.  :)

Keith's stairwell metric.zip

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