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reviewing the Key ComPonentS oF StairS and railingS 625

Before we begin detailed exercises for creating stairs and railings, let’s review the main
components of each object type and how they are organized within Revit.

Reviewing the Key Components of Stairs and Railings
Stairs and railings are system families, so they exist only within the project environment.
As you should already know, these types of families can be shared between projects only by
copying and pasting, using the Transfer Project Standards tool, or including them in your
project templates. There are several component family templates that serve as subsets of stair
and railing system families, such as profiles, posts, and panels.

Reviewing the Basic Rules of Stairs
Before you start to create any stairs in a project, you should become familiar with the basic rules
related to these special elements in Revit Architecture. We will discuss the actual geometric
components later, but first let’s review the parameters that drive the geometry. When you launch
the Stair tool, it is assumed that you want a stair to be generated between two levels. If you
start the tool from a floor plan view, the base level will be the level associated with the floor plan
view and the top will be the next level above. Keep in mind that this may be a level that
is not the next major level above; it could be a minor level such as a mezzanine. Always check the
instance parameters in the Properties palette when you are creating a new stair (Figure 15.3). You
can also assign top- and base-level offsets in the instance parameters the same way you can
for walls.

Figure 15.3
instance
parameters for a
stair

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