How would you build the top rail for a handrail of a spiral stairs

Hi Scott,
Yes, I know, but just wanted to show that the stair can be done in Chief without a lot of workarounds.

I try to avoid using manufactured spirals, as they are so cumbersome to use.

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Originally Posted by billemery

Hi Scott,
Yes, I know, but just wanted to show that the stair can be done in Chief without a lot of workarounds.

I try to avoid using manufactured spirals, as they are so cumbersome to use.

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I learned that the hard way..... just wanted to help just in case.....

Bill, is that an actual Chief stair? Or a symbol picked apart. Nice one

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Originally Posted by dshall

Yep, that works, and so much easier. Use a curve ramp, take overview, delete surfaces of ramp, railing remains, turn into symbol and all is well............... SUPER!

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The problem with using ramp is the pickets do not go down to treads properly. So............ building pickets with stairs is the way to go, but if you want a SMOOTH top rail, use the ramp with a single top rail only. So the railing is made out of pickets from stairs and the smooth handrail comes from the ramp. The ramp can be very handy in making handrail symbols.

Hi Perry,
That is a Chief stair with the stinger material assigned as "opening, no material". I did add the center column as a pline solid.

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Originally Posted by billemery

Hi Perry,
That is a Chief stair with the stinger material assigned as "opening, no material". ................

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Of course that works in RENDER, but for VECTOR the stringer shows in 3D.

Hi Scott,

I just got back from my morning golf at Encinitas Ranch.

Here's my 360 degree spiral using an arc 3D Molding Pline. It is segmented but only 7.5 degrees per segment - it just the way the arc is converted to line segments by Chief. I'm not sure if there's a way to smooth it further but it's pretty good and ray traces well.

I was able to smooth the 30 degree arc segmentation slightly by adjusting the molding offsets.

Hey Joe,

I've been keeping an eye out for the solution to this very issue in CA for a while so I'm very pleased to see the subject come up. However, I've created an arc exactly like you have, but in the Transform/Replicate dbx, the bottom button, "About Current Point" is greyed out and not selectable. Any pointers or suggestions????

You have to create a CAD point. The best way is to look at the arc, figure our exactly where the center of the arc is (x/y) and then Input the CAD point at those coordinates.

This is a Spiral Stair I did for an 'A-Frame' Cabin.

And some others that I have available for a small fee :D

You da man Joseph! I'm off to the races!! Thanks for helping me out.

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Originally Posted by Joe Carrick

Hi Scott,
Here's my 360 degree spiral using an arc 3D Molding Pline. It is segmented but only 7.5 degrees per segment - it just the way the arc is converted to line segments by Chief. I'm not sure if there's a way to smooth it further but it's pretty good and ray traces well.

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Joe,

The reason that the rail is segmented is because when you edit the 3D molding line by changing it's End Z value, you really are not forming part of a spiral, you are just rotating the arc in one plane.
Try the same thing with a nearly completed circle and you will see that the arc stays coplanar and just rotates in the one plane.

You can't actually define different start and end heights for a 3D polyline arc - they always default to coplanar.

The short answer is read this, the long answer is reeeeeeeeead thiiiiiiiiiiiis
http://www.chieftalk.com/showthread....ghlight=spiral