Page 657 - Divyank Tyagi

Chapter 15

Creating Stairs and Railings

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Creating stairs and railings in Autodesk Revit Architecture software can be challenging.
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Iterating and resolving your design idea is very much like working in a spreadsheet, and
designing in a spreadsheet without some graphical feedback can be frustrating. In addition,
stairs and railings are often sculptural as well as functional, and there’s a limit to the amount of
customization you can design with the provided tools and commands.
An entire book can be written about mastering stairs and railings in Revit, considering the
breadth of functionality in these tools and the unlimited number of design configurations they
can be used to create. Instead of walking through a few examples of creating stairs and railings,
this chapter will give you foundational knowledge about the rules, parts, and key functionality
of these tools so that you can use them in the most effective way possible for your own designs.
We will also give you some ideas to tackle tougher design challenges by thinking beyond the
default tools.
In this chapter, you’ll learn to:
◆ ◆ Understand the key components of stairs and railings
◆ ◆ Understand the different stair tools and apply them to custom designs
◆ ◆ Design railings and use the Railing tool for other model elements

◆ ◆ Implement best practices

Designing Stairs and Railings
Designing and iterating complex stairs and railings in any software application can be difficult.
You will need to deeply understand the rules and constraints of the application, in effect, learn
the language of the application. To communicate fluently in that language, you need to be able
to think fluently. You almost have to be able to think beyond the individual words and begin to
arrange whole ideas.
Regardless of how well you know how to use a particular application, you have to
incorporate imagination and complex design issues. Sometimes stairs and railings are
straightforward and functional (for example, a steel or concrete egress stair), and there’s not
much room for creative thinking. But in many cases, stairs and railings are conceived as
feature elements within a space. They’ll be touched and experienced up close. They may be
extraordinarily complex and spatial—almost an inhabited sculpture (Figure 15.1).

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