Feature Script for stairs?

bryan_lagrange

I was checking to see if there was a feature script out there that would help in the designing of stairs with landings and rails and follows OSHA standards? 

Thank you for your replies and help in advance.

david_lang457

I'd like to second this. Even without trying to have such a thing enforce standards, modeling a bunch of steps and extruding each step to the right height is a real pain (and then when the total changes and you need to adjust each step's rise...)

what I did was to use the linear pattern to make the steps, manually made the landings, and then extruded each one (thick enough to overlap so the result could be one object). This seems like it's really crying out for a custom featurescript

Is there any sort of marketplace where we can offer to reward people who produce such featurescripts?

Is there any way to group featurescripts that are especially useful for a particular purpose (i.e. architectural related things)

When you find a featurescript, is there any easy way to find a link to the discussion about it?

john_mcclary

I make stepped spiral chutes (spiral stairs basically) all the time in Onshape.

I found that using a curve pattern is not reliable, so @lougallo (I believe it was him, was many years ago now) showed me a trick to build that pattern manually that was more accurate and did not require a spiral curve to be drawn (which is expensive feature)

Basically, the setup is:

Give yourself a couple of variables to define your steps, in this case height, count, angle.
(this is something I do since these change constantly for me, depending on the job)

Then draw your first step

Then the trick he showed me is in the folder "pattern"
Create an empty variable, I called it deltaZ
then make that variable AGAIN, and set it to:  #deltaZ+#stepHeight

what that does is make every call to deltaZ add stepHeight to itself when patterned.

Next trick is to make a linear pattern of your step
for distance set it to #deltaZ-#stepHeight 
this will keep the first instance in the same position as the first step, but later calls to linear pattern will re-evaluate deltaZ and stepHeight and continually increase each time.

Finally, the last trick is to do a circular->Feature Pattern
Select both DeltaZ and the linear pattern and select Apply per Instance (this is what re-evaluates the variables)

now we can plug in a step angle and instance count depending on your needs and it's finished.




I know this is a lot of stuff to remember, but after he showed me this I kept going back to the last place I used and followed the steps in the tree.
I just created this document for you if you want to copy it for your reference too.
spiral stair | Part Studio 1 (onshape.com)

Once you figure out YOUR variables and what inputs you want, then a featurescript can be tailor made for you

Here's one I am working on for reference: (So I know how powerful and accurate this can be)
 

good enough to create perfect interlocking bolt-together sheet-metal parts with tight tolerances and zero effort.

AustinPackard

Thank you, @john_mcclary! I was also running into issues making a spiral staircase using a curve pattern off of a helix. The solution you detailed is a very clever way to quickly make and adjust this kind of feature.