Stair and Railing Connections

[jasonmccool8686]

Has anyone been able to use the stair and railing specific steel connections included in Revit 2019? They don't seem to recognize the OOTB stair and railing families, which seems really weird to have an option for a railing post connection that won't recognize the program's own railing post... There are several connections I've loaded that I simply cannot get to work, and Autodesk gives ZERO guidance about them that I've been able to find. I've also tried looking on multiple Revit blogs/forums/how-to sites, and can't find anything about these. Has nobody even tried using them in the 3 years they've shown up in the list of available connections? There's a "railing post connection", a "railing joint handrail", a "stair angle at the top", and a "stair end plate with cope" that seem to be specifically made for making accurate stair and railing connections, but what in the world does one have to do to get them to work?!?!?

[jasonmccool8686]

OK, I finally tried using a structural column family  (1 1/4" STD Pipe) inserted into the model and crossing a sloped structural beam (C12x20.7) to build the stair and railing from scratch, ignoring the supposedly helpful OOTB stair tools. The railing post connections work on that, but is anyone actually modelling their stairs and railings 1 individual piece at a time? Then you can't use railing extensions like this stair actually has at the bottom. To get the connections for the posts, things like railing extensions become a group of individually placed framing members that would have to be updated manually if the stair slope or anything changed. What a pain!

Autodesk: the stairs and railings features desperately need some more updates. They have to be the most convoluted tools in Revit, but always come up with results that can't actually be used for anything more than generic conceptual representations.

[Rob_Merriman]

Hi @jasonmccool8686 

So the steel connections and whole steel tab have been taken from Advance Steel, a steel detailing program that was acquired by Autodesk in 2014. Advance Steel is now available in the AEC collection

The tools that you have in Revit are a direct copy of the tools in Advance Steel. In Advance Steel you model steel stairs and railings with dedicated maxros, for example you model a length of railings based on a beam which could be a channel in a staircase, the railing handrail connection is for joining 2 lengths of rails and the post connection is for one off connections where the post is modelled outside of the railinh macro tools  

[jasonmccool8686]

Thanks, Rob. I have seen that program listed in our AEC bundle of 30 programs we don't use + Revit. I even installed it 1 time but never had time to mess with it. I wasn't particularly wanting to spend half the afternoon installing and reinstalling a new program, or having to learn another program right now, but apparently Autodesk didn't "really" do much with stairs and just ported over pieces of this Advance Steel. There's a shock. I couldn't get it to export from Revit 2019 (the Advance extension said it installed multiple times but never would show up in Revit 2019), but this is a standalone project that I can upgrade to 2021 without affecting anyone else, so I did that.
First impressions: this Advance looks like a big step backwards to AutoCAD.... which I've barely touched in almost 10 years. However, I see it does have quite the library of stair and railing components and connections built-in, which is a plus. Hopefully the alleged bi-directional import/export with Revit works as advertised. That would be a pleasant surprise. I was able to create a railing kind of like what I wanted, but now I can't modify it, and I can't find anything in their worthless help on how to simply modify or edit an existing railing. Everything is about creating one, which I already did! Any ideas?

[jasonmccool8686]

Advance Steel was just too frustrating, so I just gave up on that. I guess Revit users are just stuck with sucky 3D stairs and showing everything via drafting views. It would still be nice if Autodesk could improve the stairs and railings so they were useful for more than just generic placeholders.

[YarUnderoaker]

Please vote Structural stairs and railings families 

[chriskD6WP2]

The stairs and rails function in Revit are architectural features that have limited capabilities. They go back to the early days of Revit. And no, they will not export into Advance Steel because of this legacy background. But, as you discovered, when Autodesk included structural steel detailing connections to their product, it made it somewhat confusing for new users (such as myself) and veterans alike. I think it's because of Autodesk's acquisition of Advance Steel a few years ago, that made it difficult for the business to clearly show what their intention is/was to the end-user on how to use their products successfully (back then and now). Basically, a lot has happened in a short period of time with a poorly communicated course of action to the users.

For years, people have been asking for more functionality in steel modeling for Revit. Once Autodesk implemented some components of Advance Steel into Revit this provided some more opportunities but also perplexed users at the same time - as you have just experienced. I thought the same thing when I started using Revit 3 years ago. Right in the middle of this "transition" phase. Argh.

Anyway, I understand your frustration with modeling stairs. We design a lot of stairs and handrails in our business and for the most part, I continue to show "general" illustrations of those aspects of the project. We do this because we rely on the steel detailer to take care of the "details" or "connections" (that's another topic altogether). Which, for the most part, if fine for the client. Until Autodesk gets this straightened out, you have two choices. 1.) Use the limited functionality of the stair and rail features built into Revit or 2.) manually model your stairs and rails, piece by piece...by lonely piece.

Believe me when I say I FEEL your pain. If you do mostly steel modeling and need to show every steel connection, despite your experience with Advance Steel in the past, that is the product you might want to consider using daily. Yes, it will take you 6 months to get to a point where you feel comfortable with it but it allows you to do so much more with regards to steel modeling. This is the opinion of someone who uses both plus additional non-Autodesk software to get his job done.

I've been around long enough to know there is a valid reason as to why there are multiple tools in the toolbox...for now. LOL