Placing Stairs in Revit Structure: A Step-by-Step Guide

Creating Multi-Level Stair Systems in Revit Structure: Detailed Step-by-Step Process.

Learn how to place and modify stairs in Revit Structure with this comprehensive guide. This article will walk you through the process of creating stairs, adjusting parameters, creating openings and aligning joists in your architectural model.

Key Insights

  • The article outlines a step-by-step process to placing a stair in Revit Structure, starting with using the architecture tab to select the stair by the component option and then adjusting parameters such as level and offsets.
  • An important technique outlined in the article is creating an opening for the stair. This is done by turning off the architectural background, creating an arbitrary opening, and then modifying it to fit the stair. The visibility is changed to fine to provide edges to work with, and the structure panel's opening and vertical tool is used to create the opening.
  • The article also discusses how to handle potential complications such as joists in the stair opening. It suggests realigning joists manually, using the move command, and adjusting the detail level to fine to see the joists. It also mentions the use of the align command to align the opening, joists, and slab.

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Hello and welcome to Revit Structure. Let's get started. Now that we finished the superstructure for the building, let's look at placing a stair.

First thing we'll do is we'll zoom in in the lower right hand corner and see the architectural background has supplied a stair that we can frame around. Let's get started. First thing we want to do is we want to go to the architecture tab because the structure tab doesn't allow us to place stairs or have a stair ability.

Let's go to the circulation panel. Let's go to stair, stair by component. Assembled stair is what we're looking for because the other options are concrete and they won't work as well with our system.

Let's look at our parameters. Level one to level two. Zero zero is our offsets because we want them flush with the floors.

The nice thing about Revit is it calculates the number of desired risers that we will use. Let's get started. Since the architectural model allows us a base point to start from, let's move our cursor until we find the end point.

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Let's drag it up and you see at the bottom we've created 12 risers, 12 remaining. It's doing the count for us. Let's go to the other side here.

To this point you see we've got 12 created, zero remaining. We've used all of our risers. Let's finish and let's take a look at it in our 3D element.

Let's pick 3D. Let's zoom in. Let's rotate it.

Okay now what we have is if you remember previously we created a shaft element for our stairs. Well the elevation difference between this floor and this floor is 13 feet plus and this is 12 feet plus. It's going to give us a different opening so what we're going to do is we're going to grab the shaft and we're going to shrink it up to the third level because the third fourth and fifth levels are all at the same height.

Okay we've created an area that we can place an opening in now. So let's go to our level two and create an opening. First thing we want to do is turn off our architectural background.

VV, Revit Link. Let's turn the visibility off, hit okay. Now we see we have the general outline of the stair from below so what we want to do is create an arbitrary opening at first and then modify it to fit afterward.

First thing we want to do is we want to change the visibility to fine. That gives us an edge to work with in the front and edges to work with in the back. So let's go to our structure panel.

Let's go to our opening and vertical tool. Let's pick that. Let's grab our slab and let's create an opening.

Let's start here and drag it back to here. Let's finish it for the moment here. Let's see what we have.

There we have the opening around the stair. What we want to do is we want to flush out our opening to the stair supports. So again let's pick our opening.

Let's edit boundary. Let's go to our align tool. Let's pick that.

Now let's align our stair and slab. Let's go to this side and it looks like it's already aligned here. So let's finish here.

Let's take a look and we're aligned to the face of the beam. Let's finish this command here and let's take a look at what we have. Now we have a stair opening at our second level.

Let's go back to our 3D view and take a look. There we have the stair opening that matches our stair. Okay let's close this view.

Now what we want to do is we want to create a stair from level 2 to level 3. Since we're in level 2, let's get started. Again let's go to the architecture panel. Let's go to the stair component.

The straight run and let's take a look at our parameters. Again the steel assembled stair level 2 level 3 zero offsets and again this calculates our risers force. You see we have a different number.

We have 21 because the span height is less. Let's get started. Let's start here.

What we're going to do is we're going to go up 11 stairs. If you notice at the bottom there's a count. Stop here.

We'll come around to this side and we'll go the remaining 10 here and finish. Very good. Let's take a look at that after we finish in the edit mode and take a look at it in our 3D mode.

Let's zoom in. Okay let's move this around a little bit and take a look. You see now we have our stair face flush here where we want it.

First step, second step, but we have a little problem here with our shaft. So what we're going to do is we're going to go to level 3 and we're going to realign our shaft. So let's again turn off the architectural background.

Hit okay and realign our shaft. Let's pick the shaft opening. Let's go to edit sketch.

Again let's change our detail level to fine so that we can see our joists and what we want to do is we want to align these two joists to the face of the stair. But first let's align our slab. Let's pick it here and let's move it downward till it matches.

Very good. Okay let's finish this for the moment. You see we did not close the loop here so let's finish that.

Let's go to our trim command here. Check to see we're good. Actually since we're here let's escape out of the trim command and let's drag our symbolic line down to it.

Zoom out. While we're here let's align the opening here and here. Let's go to our align command here.

Align it here. Very good. Let's see if we can find our alignment.

Oh there it is there. Let's pick that. Let's align it here.

We see we have a joist that is in the stair opening so after we finish this we're going to make a few modifications. Let's go to finish mode. Now that we're finished with that let's move our joist.

Let's realign it. Let's pick our line command. The edge of the opening.

The face of the joist which it looks like it's not seeing so we'll do this manually just with the move command here from the face to the edge. We need to unpin our element first so let's cancel here. Let's pick our joist.

Let's unpin it. This is what happens when we have beam systems. It pins the units.

Now we can go back and use our line command here here and here. Now that that's aligned let's take a look at our joist down here. Escape out of this command and let's move these manually.

Let's pick the two joists. Go to the move command here and we'll pick this and we'll move these joists down to here. Let's align these joists here.

Let's pick them. Hold the command down. Control down.

Pick all of these and the ones that are pinned. Let's unpin them. Let's realign them and with this one we're going to use the extend command.

Extend multiple. Let's pick this face. Now go through and pick each one of these.

Let's escape out of here. Let's zoom out and let's take a look at what we have. Let's go to our 3D view and there we have our stairs aligned.

Very good. Okay let's escape out of this. What we're going to do now is instead of drawing two more flights of stairs in, since these stair spans from floor to floor are the same, we can pick this stair.

We can go to copy on the clipboard. Place it in the clipboard. Do the pull down on the paste and we want to align it to selected levels.

So let's pick this. Since we have it at levels two, we want to place it level three and four, which will take us all the way up to where we need to be. So let's pick level three.

Hold your shift down. Level four. Hit okay.

And there we have it. We have our stair system set. Let's close this view and go to our fourth level.

There it is. And let's go back and change this to fine and readjust our joists again here. Unpin it.

These joists, let's unpin those. The ones that are pinned. Let's align this joist to the face of the opening here.

And again, let's go to our multiple commands. But first, let's escape out of that and realign the face of these two joists. Let's move it to the face of the opening.

Now let's realign it. The perpendicular joist to this joist here. Very good.

Escape out of that. Let's change it back to a coarse finish. Let's zoom out.

Let's turn off our background. Take a look at what we have. Is it okay? And there you have another stair set.

Very good. Go ahead and finish the next level. And that's it for this video.

We'll see you in the next one.

Andy Cos-Y-Leon

Revit Structure Instructor

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