Necessity is the mother of invention as they say, and as I was creating a small two story model of a garage for local customer today it quickly became painfully obvious that I still do not have a good stair plugin or module.
The toolbar for the stairs module will start out with the following two icons, there will probably be additional ones added for concrete or steel stairs in the future:
The basic parameters for the Draw Stairs Menu will be:
0.) Stair Assembly Name: Auto assigned by the plugin but user can edit this parameter.1.) Stair Type: Straight, L-Shape, U-Shape
2.) Stair Width: 40 inches or 1000mm
3.) Stair Height: (This will be determined by the picking of points and the bottom floor plane) ft-in or mm4.) Max. Riser Height: 7.75 inches or 200 mm
5.) Draw Risers: YES/NO
6.) Riser Thickness: 3/4" or 19 mm
7.) Riser Material: Lumber, Lumber PT, OSB, PLY
8.) Top Tread Flush: Yes or No (this option will make the top tread flush with the upper level/deck
9.) Tread Depth: 10" or 255 mm
10.) Tread Thickness: 1.25" or 32 mm
11.) Tread Nosing: 1.25" or 32 mm
12.) Nosing Shape: SQUARE or ROUND
13.) Tread Material: Lumber, Lumber PT, OSB, PLY, Oak, Birch, Maple, Pine etc... (custom material from material manager in global settings.
14.) Stringer Qty: 2, 3, 4, or 5
15.) Stringer Depth: 11.25" or 285 mm
16.) Stringer Thickness: 1.5" or 38 mm
17.) Stringer Material: Lumber, Lumber PT, LSL, LVL
18.) Stair Framing: YES, NO, 2D
19.) Advanced Options YES or NO
The advanced options or parameters are tentatively:
1.) Thrust Block: None, 2x4, 2x6, 2x8 or metric sizes for metric templates
2.) Hanger Board: Yes or No, will default to 3/4" or 19 mm OSB
3.) Landing Tread: Yes or No ( will default to a 3-1/2" landing tread with bull nose to match stair treads)
Eventually I will add other advanced options such as hand rails, skirt boards, gypsum spacers, blocking, brackets etc...
I'm not an expert on stairs but I do have a couple of details where I've considered the various elements of a typical stair case:
http://design.medeek.com/cad/autocad/STAIRHEADER_SECTION.pdfhttp://design.medeek.com/cad/autocad/STAIR_SECTION.pdf
L-Shapes and U-Shapes get quite a bit more complicated with the inclusion of a landing. I will start with just a straight run of stairs first.
Right of the bat I will start with HTML draw and edit menus, no point in messing around with the traditional UI, especially with such a long list of parameters already.
