spiraling stairs, I finally got it.

[vennix]

I guess you all are familiar with spiraling stairs needing more than one turn to get to the next level. The trick is to make more than one stair. So what I did is put one in place. get the height of the last tread start a new one align them. etc etc. troublesome, troublesome.
Just yesterday I found this out.
You start your one stair in sketch mode not just 360 degrees. stay in sketch mode and draw the second run on top of the first one, just like one would with a straight stairs with more than one run. Difference is the sketches can overlap. then just finish the sketch and voila, one undivided more than 360degrees spiraling staircase. easy.

I guess you all knew, but it just made me happy.

I think I will now go and try if I can overlap sketches of straight runs, who knows?

Geert

[vennix]

overlapping straight runs now possible.
Thank you factory

Geert

[ron.sanpedro]

overlapping straight runs now possible.
Thank you factory

Geert

Good lord, this is huge! Yes, thank you thank you thank you Factory, and Geert for posting. But PLEASE, someone at Autodesk needs to disseminate this! I checked the Feature Summary for 2009 and found not a mention of this, nor is it mentioned anywhere as "new in this release", and yet this is a major improvement that we all need to know about. Indeed, I don't even see overlapping stairs mentioned specifically in the User Guide! How many other wonderful improvements will go unused until people find them randomly and then post here? Or was this actually fixed somewhere back in 2008 and many of us never knew? I cringe at the thought.
Without this post I would guess that 99% of experienced Revit users would say "can't be done, make two stairs" when asked how to do a 270 stair or the like.

So I say again, Thank you, and Autodesk, please find a way to make it easy for us to learn what has changed in each new version. You benefit as much as we do when we are fully utilizing the tool as soon as possible. And for that we will all thank you again.

Gordon

[Scott D Davis]

Maybe the developers didn't know this was fixed? It could have been a by-product of something else in the code, and was just now discovered.

[ron.sanpedro]

Maybe the developers didn't know this was fixed? It could have been a by-product of something else in the code, and was just now discovered.

If that is the case, it is probably a good idea that we NOT use the "new" feature. Complex software tends not to spontaneously acquire useful features. Useful features pretty much require some programmer intent. I would hate to start making overlapping stairs, only to crash Revit as a result, with no idea that my stair had caused it.
But Occam's Razor suggests that a developer did indeed do this intentionally, and that information just never made it to the tech writers or anyone else. Scott, any chance you can verify this? If the Factory can vet it, it is something I would gladly start using Monday, but I don't know that I want to start using 'by-products' in my work any more than in my food.

Gordon

[vennix]

So I say again, Thank you, and Autodesk, please find a way to make it easy for us to learn what has changed in each new version. You benefit as much as we do when we are fully utilizing the tool as soon as possible. And for that we will all thank you again.

Gordon

I had the same a-ha erlebnis when I found out that you could duplicate elevations back in RAC2008 in stead of placing another elevation marker.

Geert

[jeffh]

But Occam's Razor suggests that a developer did indeed do this intentionally, and that information just never made it to the tech writers or anyone else. Scott, any chance you can verify this? If the Factory can vet it, it is something I would gladly start using Monday, but I don't know that I want to start using 'by-products' in my work any more than in my food.

Gordon

I am on the tech writing team. I also author the new features workshop. I don't recall seeing or hearing anything about overlapping stairs now being allowed in 2009. just because I did not see it in any functionality announcement or hear about it does not mean it was not intentional. I will have to look inot it with development to see how it came about.

[Andre Baros]

We're probably going to get someone in trouble for this... some well intentioned programmer trying to help us out and we turn him.

[ron.sanpedro]

We're probably going to get someone in trouble for this... some well intentioned programmer trying to help us out and we turn him.

I would certainly hope not. Perhaps there is a need to improve the reporting and record keeping systems, but punish a programmer for actually providing us a tool we want and need? Not exactly the best way to improve the product, you know?

Gordon

[mruehr]

Well it works for stairs, but not automatically with railings.
you have to manually offset the overlapping railing lines.
that suggests to me its not completely worked out.