Stair Stringers

[jfjacques]

I have a switchback stair with 4" stringers on the "inside", due to the fact that the railing sits on the stringer.

The "exterior" stringer I would like to have a 4" thickness, except when it rests against a wall. At that point I want to place 2" stringers as I no longer need a railing. 

How can I do this?  Every time I change the thickness of a portion of the stringer the entire length of the stringer changes. 

[barthbradley]

Maybe delete and replace with an In-Place Component as a Stringer?  

[jfjacques]

This would be what I would want to avoid. Especially as I would have to modify the stringer going up the stairs, not just on the landings. 

[barthbradley]

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@jfjacques wrote:

I would have to modify the stringer going up the stairs, not just on the landings. 

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Not sure I understand your point?  

[jfjacques]

were you able to do that without modelling in place?  

I just don't want to go ahead with a workaround on the stairs. 

[barthbradley]

It's a workaround. 

[ToanDN]

Copy and paste the stairs in place.  Change the copy to a different stair type that use the 2" stringer type.  Draw the 4" stringer segments on one stairs and 2" stringer segments on the other.

[jfjacques]

Yes this is pretty much what I've done. K I guess this is just something missing from the software.  

[barthbradley]

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@jfjacques wrote:

Yes this is pretty much what I've done. K I guess this is just something missing from the software.  

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It is something missing from our software.  Archicad stairs can do this.  It's a crying shame Revit can't.  

[jfjacques]

Archicad is fundamentally better as long as you don't stray too far into MEP.  (Go into task manager while running one or the other and check out how archicad actually multi-threads.) Honestly Autodesk is acting more and more like a monopoly when it comes to the lackluster quality of its products. I'm looking at you 3ds!  Their marketing department takes the cake though.  How else does something like Revit overtake Archicad?  

[jfjacques]

Ok so I now have a U staircase. I change any of the stringers and the entire thing just explodes. Makes it difficult to work with when all I'm trying to do is change one stringer to 4". What I don't get is that if I change just one part of one stringer it changes every stringer whereas in the previous stair it changed only the stringer to which the re-scaled portion belonged.  

What are the rules here? 

[barthbradley]

I'm not following. Are you using the approach suggested by @ToanDN ?   The 2 Stair TYPES approach; one Type with 2" Stringers, and other Type with 4" Stringers? 

[jfjacques]

yes but switching to 4" in some cases totally mangles the stair. I have to rebuild the landings then hope everything conforms.  The stairs explode because for this particular set of stairs the entire thing switches to 4" inches not just one of the stringers. I don't get why this happening. 

[ToanDN]

Use a stair with 4" stringers as your default because it should work when you change to 2" stringers. The other way around may not.

Build a stair that works with 4" stringer everywhere and delete stringers adjacent to the wall. Copy that stair, change to the new type, delete all stringers, then add only the 2" stringers adjacent to the wall.

[jfjacques]

good idea will try