RevitCat: Revit Stair Landings

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Creating Component Based Stair Landings in Revit

As part of the new (in v2013) component based stairs, landings between runs are one of the component types. They are pretty straightforward to create, but there are a couple of little tricks described below. Modifying them is more complicated, and that will be covered in part 2.

Landings – can be created by several methods:

1. Automatic Landing

Draw two stair runs with a gap between them and let Revit place a landing between them for you. By default the options bar setting will be ticked so that this happens automatically.

On a dog-leg stair, Revit will automatically make the landing width the same as the run width

2. Pick Two Runs

Pick two runs that stop and start at the same height, and Revit will do its best to join them with an automatic landing.

3. Create sketch

Used for creating non-standard landings where Revit does not or cannot create the landing you require.

4. Convert component

This tool can be used to convert an automatically generated landing component into a sketched component, so that it can be modified to fit more complicated geometry - appropriate to use when Revit creates something close to the desired result; thus saving you time in creating a sketch from scratch.

Once converted, it will no longer behave like an automatic landing - it will not adjust itself automatically when adjoining components are modified; it will not have any shape handles. Be warned, once you convert to a sketch you cannot convert back to Automatic - so you have to modify manually or else delete and replace with an automatic landing, and lose any hosted elements or annotaion in the process.
Once you have converted a landing, it sits there like a lump of concrete - it won't allow you to just start modifying it immediately, but requires another step (pardon the pun): first you have to select the landing and click on "Edit Sketch"

5. Landing at the top of a stair

It is not possible to create an automatic landing at the top of a flight of stairs – as that requires two runs to join to. Two workaround alternatives are:

Create a sketched landing; or
Place an extra run at the top so that Revit creates an automatic landing; then delete that run – the landing will remain, but will be converted to a sketch based component

6. Landings on complex stairs

Revit will normally only create landings between two runs, but you can sometimes force it to work with more - For example, if you have a stair that splits into two parts at the landing:

First you need to draw the lower run and one of the upper runs

Then mirror the upper run

Delete the landing

Place a new landing by picking the two upper runs. If the landing edge happens to be coincident with the lower run then you may be lucky enough for Revit to join them automatically.

If the lower run is not coincident, then you would need to convert the landing to a sketch and modify it.
If the landing and runs were all joined, but you move one away, Revit will warn you that it needs to unjoin the stairs; but what it does not warn you is that it automatically converts it to a sketch based landing.

7. Landings on multi-level stairs

If you create a multi-level stair, Revit will not put landings on the intermediate levels. This may or may not be your desired result.

If you do want intermediate landings, there are a few tricks you can use on Revit.
Firstly you could try adding the intermediate landing yourself by the previously described method for creating a top landing (add another run, then delete it).

Once you set it back to multi-storey the landings show up, although they do not join properly to the upper storey of the stair

There is another big problem with the landings: The railings will fully enclose the mid-landing and top landing.

Most likely this is not what you want! I will cover how to deal with this in a subsequent post on multistorey stairs or multistorey stair railings.

Next post will be on modifying landing components.