I often receive emails asking how to design continuous curved stairs in StairDesigner.
This week Alain Marin of Escalier Bois has asked me how to set up a helical stair with a continuously curved string in StairDesigner.
The fantastic geometrical motor that runs StairDesigner is very good at calculating complex stairs, but the difficulty arises when you have to input the correct parameters for the curved sections to get the continuous curves.
Although it’s possible to do some calculations and deduct the parameters by adding and subtracting dimensions, by far the easiest way to design the stair is to let a CAD program do it for you.
In this short video I use ProgeCad my AutoCad clone to draw the plan of the stair before I use StairDesigner.
This enables me to set all the exact parameters into StairDesigner quickly and efficiently.
Although I’m using this technique for setting out a curved stair, I also do this for all but very obvious stair projects.
Here’s another article where I set up the project in CAD before using StairDesigner:
Stair Design for curved strings and landings
This is one reason why for professionals, I always advise using StairDesigner with a CAD program.