Stair Design Software

From Dave Pascalon 15th April 2012

Hello Ness,

I would like to thank you once again for the advise and personal coaching that you have given me these last weeks and since I’ve started work on my house and especially the stair that I have built thanks to your StairDesigner software.
Here are a few photos of the finished stairs that worked out much better than I could have hoped for (we are just amateur DIY enthousiasts), but we are proud to have made our stairs and proud of the final product!

We wish you all the best for your future project and now, for us  it’s time to rest a bit and enjoy our new stairs.

Kind regards

Dave Pascalon

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From: Dave Sarlotte

Hi Ness,

Here are some photos of the stair I’ve made with temporary steps in place.
A nice mix of steel and wood.

Thanks to your site and software:

regards
David

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From: Ludovic Aubier

Hello,
I have made my stair thanks to your software. It’s a quarter turn with winders, difficult to calculate because of a very small stair well that’s only 1750mm long. But It all worked out fine  in the end thanks to your software and help.
A big thankyou and congatualtions for the software and thanks again for sharing your experience in stair building.

regards
Ludovic Aubier

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From: Xavier Gence

Hi Ness,
Your articles are very interesting and as I’m an amateur I’m less embarassed to show you a few photos of the stair I have been able to make thanks to StairDesigner and your help and support.
It’s for sure that it’s not a wooden stair but the shape was very complicated and I really wanted it to look like this.
The stair is in cement and I made the form in wood. I employed a stone masson to cover the stair in marble and plastered the underside.

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From: Maarten van der Heijden

Hello,

Thanks for all the information.

Thanks to your StairFile service that I bought in November, I have been able to put together this stair with steel strings and oak steps.

Thanks for a great service.

Maarten van der Heijden

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From :Serge TESSIER

Hello,
It’s been a moment I have been wanting to reply to your emails to tell you how much I appreciate  and find interesting the information you send.
As I have built my house completely I inevitably came to the moment I had to build a stair. In fact there are 2 stairs.
It was at this moment surfing the internet I found your site, a real blessing for me.
I found everything I was looking for technically and pratically and even more.
Your motivation and enthousiasm helped me dare undertake the challenge of stair building.
I not afraid of much  but a stair seemed daunting for someone who has never made one before!
And here it is my first stair has been installed for about a year and I’m pretty proud of it!
And now I’m starting another stair project for my daughter.

 

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From: Michel Villetard

Dear Sir,
Following your last email and having filled in your survey, I’m sending you some photos of the stair that I have built in chestnut, thanks to your stair software.
I’m not a professional but an enthousiastic amateur woodworker.
I hope that the photos of a DIY are of interest to you.

regards
M.V 

Customers and Users amateur stair building, build your own stairs, how to build stairs, stair, stair buildign, staircase, stairs

It’s a cold winter’s day here in Grenoble and I’m sitting cosy here in my office.

As a professional carpenter and stair builder but I spend maybe more time here than in my workshop.

When I started my small workshop back in the 80’s all of our work was done by hand. Computers were expensive and used only for office work.

Design of our woodwork project was done by hand on a drawing board with pencil and paper.

In those days we were generic woodworkers and built anything that was asked of us. We built furniture, fitted cabinets, doors and windows, cupboards and of course stairs.

Drawing scaled plans on paper by hand was no problem for furniture and joinery; it was part of the job and something I enjoyed. The general designs of each project were drawn up to scale and detailed scale drawings drafted with all the dimensions calculated and marked up for the workshop. Scale drawings were generally enough for making even complex projects.

When a customer needed a perspective view for approval a simple isometric drawing would usually suffice and everybody was happy. Although this hand drafting took time to do thoroughly, it worked well and smoothly.

Straight stairs were made with the same process but when stairs were more complex with winders and curves, things started getting trickier.

To obtain the real sizes and shapes of all the parts needed to build these types of stair we had to draw a full size plan of the stair well and staircase.

To do this we laid out sheets of 10mm ply wood on the workshop floor.

Often several sheets had to be laid side by side to get the required surface area, and marking out précis plans of all the details for complex projects was fastidious and error prone.

We would draw out the stair as precisely as possible but it’s really not easy when you are actually walking all over the plan that you are drawing!

The plan was laid out on the workshop floor for all the time the stair was under construction. We marked the parts directly from the plan.

As well as taking up an enormous amount of space in the workshop, the lines would little by little just become invisible as they were erased away under our continuous walking over them, not speak of the dust and shaving that we has to continually sweep off.

In the 1980’s computers were just starting to come into small businesses, mainly for accountancy and general office work.

I bought a small Amstrad computer to replace my type writer and type out estimates and invoices.

I think that I saw some sort of basic drawing program on the machine and played around with it to try and draw some plans. It was in fact useless for any serious work and I quickly dropped it.

But it started me thinking about what might be possible using the right computer and program. So I started researching into the different options to design stairs.

The program that I came across at the time was Autocad version 3 or 4.

Someone gave me a demo and it looked hard and obscure to use and draw with. But one thing stuck in my mind, when you draw the stair you can measure all the parts and get the real world dimensions just clicking, with no calculations and no approximations.

This fascinated me but Autocad and a PC at the time was selling for around 5k, way over what I could afford to pay for a design program!

So back to the drawing board for me!

A year or two after I saw an advert for a CAD program called Generic CAD that claimed to be just as good as Autocad at 1/10 of the price. I jumped on the occasion and went straight out to buy it.

In fact Generic CAD was a very good drafting program, and in many ways faster and easier to use that Autocad.

Being completely computer illiterate I took some time to get it up and running, but when it was working for us it was a dream comes true. No more crouching on the workshop floor, drawing plans that slowly disappeared. I sat comfy in my office and drafted up all the plans and as the CAD program gave exact dimensions I was able to give fully detailed dimensioned plans to the shop that eliminated any need for hand drafting.

The only problem was that drawing out all the plans in CADD was very long and tedious. It was like drawing by hand but longer. Fortunately CAD gave us the advantage of printing the precise dimensioned plans that would be impossible by hand.

Today things have greatly improved. With dedicated design programs like StairDesigner all the tedious setting out is entirely automatic. We still do detailing in CAD but time is reduced to a minimum and precision is more than we need.

CAD systems like StairDesigner and Progecad give us photo realistic 3D models that we didn’t dream of doing 30 years ago.

Whether you be a professional or amateur woodworker, I strongly advise you to use some sort of CAD system for your design and drafting. The advantages over hand drafting are enormous and the only real investment you will have to make today is to take the time to learn how to use it.

Today there are many companies offer different CADD systems. Some very good systems are even free to download and you can access some from my web site.

If you are a specialized carpenter you might think of investing in specialized software like StairDesigner but if you just do general woodwork learn to use a general drafting CAD package like DraftSight or Progecad. Both are free and can draw plans for any project you can imagine.

Once mastered you wont regret it, and you’ll never go back to the drawing board!

Here’s à video showing how to embellish a StairDesigner model using Progecad an Autocad like program. The full version has all the Autocad functions and is around 10x cheaper :

 

 

You can order your full professional StairDesigner using this link:

>>>> click here to BUY STAIRDESIGNER DXF PRO <<<<<

To order ProgeCad 2011 just click here:

>>>> click here to BUY PROGECAD 2011 <<<<<

Click this link to see a video of ProgeCad in action:

http://youtu.be/dWFFl9SjGHs

 

More videos on StairDesigner and stair building on my web site:

http://stairdesignsoftware.net/enhancing-stairdesigner-models-with-progecad

http://stairdesignsoftware.net/how-to-build-a-3d-stair-project-with-stairdesigner-and-progecad

http://stairdesignsoftware.net/how-to-design-curved-strings-and-handrails-using-stairdesigner-and-progecad-3d

http://stairdesignsoftware.net/using-autocad-with-a-stair-calculator

ProgeCad, Using Stair Designer build a hand rail, build a stair, construct a handrail, hand rail, make a stair, ProgeCad, stair, stairdesigner

Here’s the third video in my using Progecad with StairDesigner series.

StairDesigner does a very good job of calculating and technically drawing the stair and you get all parts and working documents automatically.

But it falls short when it comes to specific design features like turned newel posts, spindles, moulded handrails etc.

Luckly all StairDesigner projects can be exported in DXF and easily reworked in most CADD programs.

I have used Autocad to design stairs for many years now.

Stair design with only Autocad is slow and error prone. It could take me several hours, sometimes days, of drawing to get the working plans for a stair and even then errors went un noticed and were giving us unpleasant surprises when putting the parts together in the workshop.

Over the years I developed some simple Autocad tools to speed up the work but everything remained very cumbersome and SLOW!

 

When StairDesigner came along everything got faster and easier!

The drafting errors practically disappeared and everything fitted perfectly in the workshop.

Besides the technical side of things StairDesigner’s automatic 3D made a great impression on my customers.

3d was always my big problem.

2D technical design was slow but OK with AutoCad, I just appreciated so much the ease compared to drawing the stair full size on the workshop floor, but when a customer asked for a perspective view my troubles started.

I’m not a great artist and though perspectives of furniture worked OK, stairs turning in all directions were making life hell.

Especially as people don’t pay you for a perspective drawing it’s just for free and takes for ever to set up.

The worst would be someone asking for variations, “and what if we added turned posts and changed the spindles to metal tubes ??”

Back to the drawing board!

 

Even when AutoCad came along with it’s 3D, building a 3D stair although possible, was a major nightmare  and challenge.

Drawing a 3D stair in Autocad  could bankrupt us before the customer even considered signing a cheque!

StairDesigner made life easier for basic designs but as we made more and more higher end stairs the projects quickly went over StairDesigner’s 3D functions.

So I combined the two.

StairDesigner draws the basic 3D and Autocad or Progecad do the rest.

It still takes a bit of time, but the effort is often well worth it.

A well designed stair shown off to it’s full advantage will often sell much better even though more expensive than a cheaper model.

And it’s so much more fun to design and make!

 

Here’s how I add turned posts and some extra fittings to a StairDesigner 3D stair.

And then light it up to look classy.

StairDesigner’s DXF export works well with most CAD programs so it’s not limited to using ProgeCad.

Progecad is a great cheap 2D/3D solution that works just like AutoCad for less than 1/10 of the price!

 

Hope you enjoy.

Leave a comment even if you didn’t!

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Click here to buy StairDesigner ProDXF

Click here to buy Progecad 2011

 

For more information on using ProgeCad and AutoCad with StairDesigner, take a look at these articles:

http://stairdesignsoftware.net/how-to-design-curved-strings-and-handrails-using-stairdesigner-and-progecad-3d

http://stairdesignsoftware.net/how-to-build-a-3d-stair-project-with-stairdesigner-and-progecad

http://stairdesignsoftware.net/editing-a-curved-string-stair-in-autocad

ProgeCad, Using Stair Designer autrocad, cadd, drawing stairs, ProgeCad, stair, Stair building, stair calculations, stair design, stair plan, stair software, stari construction

Here’s an email sent to me by Serge from France.

Serge is a subscriber to my email list and has no previous experience in stair building.

Serge has built himself a stair using only the free software and resources available on this web site.

I was very impressed by the way Serge undertook his project.

I think that everybody can benefit and learn something from his story and experience.

Thanks Serge for sharing this.

Here’s the translation of Serg’s email. The original is published on my French site:

http://www.stairdesigner.org

 

 

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Hello Ness,

Excuse me for this long letter, but you can use it as testimonal.

To start, I’d like to thank you for all the help and advice you have given on your site and emails.
6 months ago I went to a well known stair manufacturer in France to order a cheap staircase to enable me to access the first floor of my garage.

This stair was a ¼ turn, with a total height of 3,28 m, at a 95° .

After a long time spent trying to force his industrial software to build a stair that would fit me, the salesman could only offer me a 15 step quart turn with a 90 angle.

This was no good to me at all. So I decided to built it myself.

I am not a professional woodworker, in fact I’m a scientist, but I always liked woodwork.
Browsing the wed for help and information I quickly found your software " Stair Designer " which gave me the answers to my questions.

With help of your documentation and tutorials, I quickly and easily got the hang of using the demo version of " Stair Designer ", and designed a stair that fitted my project.

Nonetheless, having at my disposal the plans of the parts, steps, stringers, posts and spindles walking(marches), silt, posts, and spindles, but without dimensions, I found myself in front of a choice: not being professional I did not want to buy the complete software,

I thought of buying your highly-rated plans (through your StairFile service),

or accept the challenge to reconstruct the plans from the specifications given by the demo version of Stair Designer.

I opted to take up the challenge and draw the plans myself.

I revised my trigonometry and rolled up my sleeves to learn to use, the free version of ProgeCad that is downloadable from your web site.

My rudimentary English allowed me to understand the basics of this professional level CAD software and I managed to draw the plans and use Progecad to get all the part sizes.

I must admit that the stair template models with their free  plans were of great help as references, and enabled me to work and move forward  confidently.

I chose to make the stairs in spruce, using only the minimal tools that I had at hand, a jointer, circular saw, a router and an orbital sander.

I worked part time at my own pace, for 2 months (I’m retired so I do have some free time) and machined up the parts.

Yesterday I went to install and everything fell into place perfectly, just like the drawn model.

For anyone who would like to undertake a similar challenge, I would humbly give the following advice:

- Use StairDesigner to design your project. It’s easy to use and covers most of the different types of stairs that might want to build.

- If you don’t have a good understanding of geometry and maths, and can’t use some sort of CAD software don’t try to draw up the plans by yourself. Use Ness’s StairFile or StairPlan service, it will save you hours of calculations and possibly expensive errors.

- If you don’t have a few good portable tools and some mastery of woodworking, either get someone else to help with the woodwork or subcontract it.

Otherwise go to it!

It is a fantastic experience, that will make you use your muscles and your brain and give you a lot of satisfaction.

 

To conclude, thanks again to Ness, you can be proud of yourself to have enabled a complete beginner design and build a stair that’s a just a little complicated.

On the other hand it’s a real commercial flop for you, because with your help and tools I have managed to do for free what would have cost me dearly otherwise.

I feel a little guilty of using your advice and support without paying.

So a thousand thanks for continuing to teach freely for our pleasure and profit.

Serge

 

Thanks to Serge fro this very instructive email.

 

If you want more information on using the demo version of StairDesigner and Autocad or Progecad read these articles:

http://stairdesignsoftware.net/stair-software-to-modify-stair-plans

http://stairdesignsoftware.net/using-autocad-with-a-stair-calculator

http://stairdesignsoftware.net/using-a-stair-template

Customers and Users, ProgeCad, Using Stair Designer autocad, cadd, ProgeCad, stair, Stair building, stair construction, stairdesigner, stairsoftware

Stair caculator software and AutoCAD

StairDesigner can calculate and build and draw stairs very fast and efficiently but as with all parametric software whether it is stair software or not, it doesn’t cope with all the intricacy and complexity of real world situations.

I find that once StairDesigner has drawn up the general stair plans it’s often necessary to add details or modify the design to adapt to my construction techniques and the specific on site situations.

In the majority of projects that I have its rare that I only have the staircase to build. In general the staircase needs at least a balustrade around the stair well, where as more than often I need to design many elements that parametric stair software is not built to cope with, like balustrades around complicated stair wells, cupboards under stairs, specific handrails and balusters, curved steps, etc, etc……

After having looked around at other design software I’ve finally come to the conclusion that although parametric software is great for stair calculations and design, only general drafting software like Autocad can really cope with all the different situations that I come across in my real life stair design situations.

Leaving out the design details, specific moldings, cupboards, here are some of the main limitations that I have found with the StairDesigner parametric stair calculator:

- Doesn’t draw bull nose and curtail steps and curved risers.

- Doesn’t draw starting volutes

- Can’t give different thicknesses for strings on each flight

- Doesn’t design the string and handrail transitions to level landing

Luckily StairDesigner drawings can be exported in DXF and opened in a general drafting software to update and modify the design details.

In this video I show how to take a stair built in StairDesigner and open it in Autocad to add a bullnose step.

Of course I use AutoCad but the same process can be used with any CADD software that can read DXF files.

If you are only interested in building manufacturing drawings then a 2D drafting program like Solid Edge is easily enough. For 3D presentation a dedicated rendering tool is probably easier than AutoCad.

The interesting thing about combining CAD and StairDesigner is that it gives unlimited design possiblities for adding and modifying the stairs.

To read our review on StairDesigner just click on the link below:

<Stair software review>

Here are some other articales for AutoCad users:

Spiral Stair case problems – AutoCAD Forums
Spiral Stair case problems AutoCAD 3D Modelling & Rendering.

3d Curved stair – AutoCAD Forums
Making stair in 2d and 3d with AutoCAD

Creating a New Drawing by Using Parts from Another Drawing
Create a separate staircase drawing by using the staircase you’ve already drawn.

ProgeCad, Using Stair Designer autocad, cadd, calculator, curved, software, stair, staircase, stairway, step, string

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