Revit Multistorey Railings - Story 1

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[Edit: Revit 2018 has a new method for creating multistorey stairs & railings, so the issues described here will not be relevant once you upgrade to v2018;  if you are using v2017 or earlier, read on]

Here is a curious story to tell:  This is a description of how to manage railings on a multistorey stair that has been created using the "Multistory Top Level" stair property in Revit (Method 1 in my previous post), and where you have incorporated intermediate landings on each building level of the stair.  The resulting railing will be a single closed loop - both inside and outside joined together. 

The description below assumes that you followed the steps in the previous blog post  to get to this stage.  If your multistorey stair does not include landings at the storey levels (maybe you used floor slabs instead), none of this applies.

Edit Railing
If you try to edit the railing to get rid of the section running across the landing/run junction or the outside edge of the landing, you will run into problems in Railing edit mode

After you delete the unwanted lines and then finish the sketch it will give an error message – it requires a single continuous chain of sketch lines, not a loop within a loop (even if you remove all overlapping lines)

To solve this the railing needs to be first separated into two parts. This can be done by two different methods:
1.  You could duplicate the single railing and then edit each one separately, stripping them back to an inner and an outer railing (Process not described here).
2.  Alternatively, take a few steps back in the stair creation process, to edit the railings before you delete the temporary top flight:

• first you need to do some undoing to reinstate that temporary run above the top landing (refer Method 1 or item 5 of Adding Landings to top of stairs );  

• Edit the outside railing (because of the top run there are two separate railings). 
• Delete the segment associated with the extra run

• Make sure there is a break in the loop by dragging the end of the landing rail line away from the first run line; the gap must be at least 32mm otherwise the lines will automatically rejoin! (That is about 1 ¼ inches in that quaint imperial system used in the USA).

• NB. If you want the sloping section of rail to extend one tread beyond the lowest riser (common practise), then you need to extend that line by one tread depth before making the 32mm gap.  It may give you a slope warning, but it is not clear why because the railing will be parallel to the flight

• One method to stop that warning is to make the sketch line overrun dimension just short of a tread depth – by 1mm say (for a 250mm tread, the railing sketch line should extend 249mm past the lowest riser)

• Then you need to do something similar for the inside loop railing – delete unwanted segments and make a gap. You might again want to extend the sloping rail line by one tread (minus 1mm), and then make the gap in the short landing line

• Another alternative is to extend the short landing line by at least 32mm, and leave a gap of 1mm to avoid the sloping railing warning. The best option depends on how your rail is defined relative to the sketch line location and how you want the join to work

• Finish the railing sketch

• Edit the stair to delete the top flight – the railings should now be separate. NB. This process does break the automatic nature of the railing sketch – it will no longer update when the stair changes

Once you make the stair multistorey again, the railings should behave better. The small gaps may not be perfect but they are a whole lot better than the junctions that Revit makes normally

If you don’t want the railings to run across the back of the stair landings (eg. doors onto landing), you can edit the railing to remove segments but you'll lose the side railing of the landing (because you need a continuous chain of sketch lines in the railing)

Then you need to add a new railing to the landing sides: host it on the stair if you want it to be the same on both levels (it will become multistorey if the stair is); or host it by level if you want different railings on each landing

 

Watch out for the “Tread/Stringer Offset property for the railing so that it will align properly with the other railings (defaults are different for automatic railings and manually created railings)

Non-multistorey railings must be hosted by level, not on the stair – that way they can be different on each level

However, if you find all this is too fiddly, or else you need the top landing to be different then you may need to try Method 2 for multistorey stairs.
You could also lobby Autodesk to fix the railing tool so that it works better with the new stair by component tool!  Maybe one day we won't have to invent these horrible clunky workarounds.

Go to Revit Stair & Railings Index Page

Revit Multistorey Stairs - Method 1

Go to Revit Stair & Railings Index Page

Hong Kong

[Edit: Revit 2018 has a new method for creating multistorey stairs, so the issues described here will not be relevant once you upgrade to v2018;  if you are using v2017 or earlier, read on]

With the new component based stair tools in Revit v2013 (and onwards) there are now three distinct ways to create multistorey stairs. In the USA it would be spelt "Multistory", but that is another story.  In the rest of the English-speaking world we put an "e" into storey to distinguish it from a tale!

Each method has its pros and cons. Here I will deal with method 1, which uses the old “Multistory Top Level” setting to create virtual upper levels.
Refer to a following post for method 2 (additional stair runs).  In Method 3, Revit now allows spiral stairs to run around more than 360 degrees to create multistorey spirals.

Taihang Mountains, China

Creating Multistorey Stairs – Method 1

This method is similar to the old (pre-2013) Revit method, but there are some subtle differences described in the process below:

• Create a typical one-storey stair; go to the stair properties

• Change the “Multistory Top Level” property from None to an upper level on the list. Assuming floor to floor heights are all equal, it will replicate the lower stair on the upper storey(s). With this method, the upper storeys must be the same heights as the lower ones;  alternatively, if you have changed the stair Base or Top Offsets to something other than zero, then the Multistory Top Level needs to be a multiple of the "Desired Stair Height" shown in the properties.

• Note that it will not add the intermediate landings at each storey level – you need to do that yourself (see below)
• If the upper storey heights are different, you will probably get an error message. If you proceed it will store the warning with the stair and create intermediate storeys, but will not create the flights for the top level 

• If the odd storey height is somewhere in the middle of the building, Revit does not build a reduced height stair like “Floor 7 ½ ” in the film Being John Malkovich 

 

• Instead Revit gives a warning about that floor and keeps building the stair with flights at standard heights to match the original but stops short of the top.

• If the levels are changed so that all are matching, the stair will not adjust itself automatically, nor will the warning disappear – you need to manually reset the top storey level to get it to add the missing storey. 
• Also, if the levels all start off equal and one is subsequently changed, Revit will not adjust the stair nor will it give an error message – it just won’t align the landings with levels. You can use this to your advantage if you want a multistorey stair to go up through a non-standard storey height but with standard run heights.

• (Hot Tip) In fact you can take this a step further (pun intended) by creating a special level just to control the top of your multistorey stair, and give that level an explicit name. The height of that level must be a multiple of the “Desired Stair Height” (typically the height between the lower two stair levels). It does not matter what other levels exist between the Top Offset and Multistorey Top Level

• Then change your stair properties to reach that Multistorey Top Level

• Once that is done you can move the special level out of harms way – it can even go below the lowest stair level underground. You must not delete the level otherwise the multistorey part will disappear – so it is a good idea to rename it to warn people not to remove it 

 

•  This method will eliminate the warning message for the stair, for those who have a zero tolerance policy for warnings.

Tread Numbers

The stair Tread Number tool will not work on the upper flights – it will only allow you to select the “real” stair runs, not the virtual ones created by the Multistory setting.

 

Intermediate Landings 

Revit will not add the intermediate storey landings for you

• You can go back into Edit mode to add a landing at the top of the defined stair by creating a sketch landing or by adding an extra run at the top, then deleting the run - the remaining landing will be converted to a sketch based component 

• (refer to Landings for more detail)

• Once you complete the stair, you will notice a few very odd things happen

• The upper stairs will not join properly with the new intermediate landing

• This can be partially rectified by changing the run property “Extend Below Base” to a negative figure matching the landing thickness (it will also extend into the floor at the base); it won’t actually join the landing but at least it will be modelled correctly at the junction.

Railings 

• Revit will also create railings all around the intermediate landings effectively blocking off the upper flights; it will also join the inner and outer railings into one element

In the next post I will show how to stop the railings from doing this

Go to Revit Stair & Railings Index Page