Curved Monolithic Stairs - Can they be done?

[Adrian Esdaile]

Monolithic stairs are proving very difficult to create in v9.1 of Revit, especially curved monolithic stairs.

The attached file shows 3 stairs. Stair 1 is monolithic and curved - but was progressively upgraded from v8.1 Trying to edit Stair 1 results in either "A serious error has occurred..." or the monolithic swept underside disappearing with the "Cannot create monolithic stairs" error.

Stairs 2 & 3 were made in Revit 9.1 and a considerable simpler than Stair 1, yet they cannot be made monolithic! Well, not smooth monolithic - just 'stepped' which is not what we want at all - we need a smooth underside, like Stair 1.

Does anyone know a way to get these damn stairs to work?

Of course, the builders are waiting for the drawings for the formwork construction, and yet again, laughing about stupid architects and the failure of Revit.

Simple bugs like this are VERY BAD ADVERTISING for Revit!

[rjcrowther]

There is a workaround for this. It involves using your railing to provide for a smooth bottom to the stairs. If you search these forums you will find a more detailed explaination.

From my experience, curved monolithic stairs do not work very well at all in Revit.

Rob

[Adrian Esdaile]

There is a workaround for this. It involves using your railing to provide for a smooth bottom to the stairs. If you search these forums you will find a more detailed explaination.

From my experience, curved monolithic stairs do not work very well at all in Revit.

Rob

I can't use a railing - it won't show up in my concrete profile drawings, where I have the railings turned off.

Suggestions to swtich the railings on and use the invisible linework tool will be politely ignored; I have a lot of complex railings! (Don't get me started on how THEY don't work, either)

Making stairs out of concrete must surely be the most common way to build stairs anywhere in the world these days; Revit's head-in-the-sand attitude to monolithic stairs hopefully won't last forever.

The builders are still waiting.

[Steve_Stafford]

Adrian,

How close are these? Exterior deck stairs weren't clear to me what you really wanted there. For the other two I just turned off the "end with riser" parameter. I adjusted the Landing Overlap for the curved landing at the top. Push it too far and Revit wanted to crash.

If push comes to shove you should be able to model exactly what you want with solids and voids as an in-place family?

Oh and what flavor of Revit did you make these stairs in anyway? What is View Filter?? See attached properties dialog for the stair.

[Mr Spot]

Steve,

You seem to have a similar approach to me when it comes to these types of stairs. I generally find its much easier to do these types of stairs as a solid sweep floor family. This way i can attach walls to their underside and finish them more correctly at the ends with floors. I then use the stair tool to do any finish i need to the treads & risers, this enables my plan views to show more appropriately and to host railings to. If the stair finish is raw i'll embed the stair into the floor family.

When it comes to this type of stair I usually do as a floor, generally its quicker too.