Multistory stair railings, how to connect?

[patricks]

How do I get the inner railing on my multistory (storey?) stairs to connect at the middle floor levels, but have the proper extensions at the very top and the very bottom? I can't seem to make it work. If I put an extension on the bottom rail, it shows the same extension at every floor level. Ditto with the top extension. I need all the middle floor levels where there are stairs going both up and down, to simply wrap around, like it does at the landing between each floor level.

[barthbradley]

Could you post a image? Hard to visualize what you're trying to do. My first thought is modify Railing Path, but I suspect from your credentials, that you've already looked at this or it doesn't apply.

[patricks]

I have a railing set to have upper and lower extensions. But since the stair is multistory, I only have the stair sketched on the bottom floor up to the 2nd floor. Likewise my railings are only on that bottom stair section. The Multistory setting just makes it continue on up to the upper level I set.

The problem is at the top of the lower stair at the 2nd floor, and the beginning of the next stair going up to the 3rd floor (stair termination). The railing making the inner loop (not the outer railing at the stairwell wall), should continue on up without interruption. But it has the top stair extension, and the bottom extension where it starts going up again to the 3rd floor, because technically that 2nd floor is the top end of the railing sketch.

I can't even seem to do separate rails for the lower and upper stair sections. If I do one on the lower section, it automatically applies it to the upper section.

[barthbradley]

Okay, pardon me if this sounds too "low-level", but I'm looking at this as if you're trying to create (and duplicate, by virtue of making it multi-story) the return inner railing at the landings and floors. (Pardon me if I lost you already). To do this, I modify the railing path of the inner rail by being careful to pick the end-point of the railing and then sketching a line in the direction it should go - being careful NOT to connect the opposite end of the sketch line to anything. Type in the length instead; the distance separating the two runs. Does this make any sense? If not, sorry. Just trying my best.

[patricks]

This is the problem I'm having. I want the handrail to have a post return at the bottom. But since it's a multistory stair, the railing repeats itself on the next set of stairs up above, including the post return. I want the handrail to simply be continuous instead of having that post return at the 2nd floor level.

[barthbradley]

Patrick: do you have “Top Rail” properties shown in your Railing Type Property dialog? I'm guessing not. If not, duplicate the existing railing type and the new (duplicated) rail properties will now include "Top Rail". This will give you additional options to configure railing.

[barthbradley]

Patrick, I might have misread your drawing. I was looking over your stair jpeg this morning, trying to figure out how you built it. It looks like you used a handrail component vs. building the handrail into the Rail Structure. I was thrown by the Rail Supports. Anyways, I don’t think you can do what you want to do in a multi-level stair; which I’m sure you know is just a copy – similar to an array. It makes sense, too. You’ve got the Start/End Terminations defined for the source, and it’s repeated. Change one and they all change. I got no tips or tricks on this one; maybe someone else does. Good Luck.

[patricks]

If there's no way to fix this, then multistory stairs are completely useless. I'll have to do separate stairs for each floor-to-floor flight, with separate railings for each. That will be a MAJOR pain I suspect.

[barthbradley]

I haven't tried this, but why not "multi-story" to landing heights and to Levels: 2 separate stairs. (e.g. stair 1 from Level 1 to Landing, stair 2 from Landing to Level 2). Just a thought. Maybe a bit out of the box.

...or why not just forget multi-story altogether and Copy/Paste to selected levels?