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’ve finished the superstructure for the building, let's look at placing a stair.
The first thing we’ll do is zoom in on the lower right-hand corner and see the architectural background has supplied a stair that we can frame around. Let's get started. The first thing we want to do is go to the Architecture tab because the Structure tab doesn’t allow us to place stairs or include stair functionality.
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 1 to Level 2. 0 and 0 are our offsets because we want them flush with the floors.
The nice thing about Revit is it calculates the required number of risers. 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, with 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, 0 remaining. We’ve used all of our risers. Let’s finish and take a look at it in our 3D element.
Let’s pick 3D*. Let’s zoom in. Let’s rotate it.
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 one is 13 feet and 12 feet, respectively. It’s going to give us a different opening, so what we’re going to do is grab the Shaft and 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 where we can place an opening. So let’s go to our Level 2 and create an opening. The first thing we want to do is turn off our architectural background.
VV, Revit Links*. Let’s turn the visibility off. Hit OK. Now we see 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, we want to change the visibility to Fine*. That gives us an edge to work with in the front and back. So let’s go to our Structure panel.
Let’s go to Opening and select the Vertical Opening tool. Let’s pick that. Let’s grab our slab and create an opening.
Let’s start here and drag it back to here. Let’s finish it for the moment. Let’s see what we have.
There we have the opening around the stair. What we want to do is 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 opening to the 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 and 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 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.
Select Straight Run and take a look at our parameters. Again, Steel Assembled Stair*, Level 2 to Level 3,0 offsets—and again, this calculates our risers for us. 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 go up 11 stairs. If you notice at the bottom, there’s a count. Stop here.
We’ll come around to this side and go the remaining 10 here and finish. Very good. Let’s finish in Edit Mode and take a look in our 3D View*.
Let’s zoom in. Okay, let’s move this around a little 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 with our shaft. So what we’re going to do is go to Level 3 and realign the Shaft*. Let’s again turn off the architectural background.
Hit OK 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 we can see our joists, and what we want to do is align these two joists to the face of the stair. But first, let’s align our slab. Let’s pick it here and move it downward until it matches.
Very good. Okay, let’s finish this for the moment. You see we didn’t close the loop here, so let’s finish that.
Let’s go to our Trim command. Check to see we’re good. Actually, since we’re here, let’s escape out of the Trim command and drag our sketch 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.
Align it here. Very good. Let’s see if we can find our alignment.
Oh, there it is. Let’s pick that. Let’s align it here.
We see we have a joist that’s in the stair opening, so after we finish this, we’ll make a few modifications. Let’s go to Finish Mode*. Now that we’re finished, let’s move our joist.
Let’s realign it. Let’s pick our Align 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 with the Move command, 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 Align command—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, and we’ll pick this and move these joists down to here. Let’s align these joists here.
Let’s pick them. Hold CTRL 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.
Escape out of here. Zoom out and take a look at what we have. Let’s go to our 3D View*—and there we have our stairs properly aligned.
Very good. Okay, let’s escape out of this. What we’re going to do now is—rather than draw two more flights of stairs—since these stair spans from floor to floor are the same, we can pick this stair.
We can go to Copy to Clipboard*. Place it on the clipboard. Do the pull-down on Paste and we want to align it to selected levels.
So let’s pick this. Since we have it at Level 2, we want to place it on Levels 3 and 4, which will take us all the way up to where we need to be. So let’s pick Level 3,
Hold your Shift down, Level 4. Hit OK.
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. Let’s go back and change this to Fine and readjust our joists here again. 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 Coarse display. Let’s zoom out.
Let’s turn off our background. Take a look at what we have. Is it OK? 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.