Please Explain Stair Sketch Lines

[bowlingbrad]

Every time I need to edit stairs, I find myself in the 'trial and error' world. Pull this, disjoin that, finish sketch, see error, cancel, repeat.

I would love for the more knowledgable of this community to help describe the sketch lines and their limitations. What actually can be done by pulling the endpoints of the greem boundary lines? When does splitting a boundarly line help? What are the consequences of pulling the grips of the blue run line? Do the black lines mean anything more than the location of the arrow lines? What is the best way to manipulate riser lines?
And I'm sure there is more. To be clearer, I guess I'm looking for what to do's and what not to do's.

I have included a jpg which I'm hoping all of you download, make some comments and upload. I'll try to compile a completed how-to once I feel it's complete.

Thanks in advance!

[DanielleAnderson]

Brad,
Jim Balding and Scott Brown taught an excellent class related to stairs last fall at AU (I think it was called Moving Up and Keeping Dry or something like that), you might see if you can get ahold of that material, it made stairs and rails seem much easier. I too had been using the trial and error method for a good 2 years before that.
I have lately gone to using the boundaries tool and then fill in the risers (and you draw them from bottom to top, by the way) and am finding great success with that, instead of always using the run tool.
That would be my best advice for trying to understand stairs (at least with the 2 minutes that I have to spare right now).
Danielle

[bowlingbrad]

Thanks for the feedback, Danielle.

I did attend that class at AU and it did help, but, I'm still looking for an exact description of the why and how of all of those lines.

Thanks again

[sbrown]

the run line in the middle of the stair run defines the extents of the stair. So if you highlight it and drag on end longer, it will add risers, drag it the other way and it subtracts risers. so on a typ. U stair you would adjust it with just that one line. The green lines are the boundary lines, they will update automatically based on what you do to the blue line(run line). If you want the stair to flare at the bottom, you can modify the shape of the green(boundary) line and then extend the riser lines to it and they will follow that shape. If you have complex stairs you can create them without the run tool at all, just draw the boundary lines you want, then starting at the bottom of the stair(first riser) draw your risers where you want them. The boundary line need to stop and start and any change between sloped and flat since it also defined the path of the railing.

[chris.hitchcock.nz]

theres quite a good free movie on www.DGCAD.com for revit 8 regarding stairs, I found this helped a lot, goes through and explains things and as its a movie you can save it etc, and work through at your leisure. Heres the link:
http://www.dgcad.com/message.asp?VideoTitle=REVIT8-L2b
hope it helps
Regards Chris.