Hi Bob,
You should be able to achieve both those things with RailClone. Here's how:
Solid Staircase1. To create a solid staircase, use a single tread as the segment and set the
Deform mode to
Stepped. Set the Alignment to
Top.
2. Wire the segment to a
Transform operator and export the
Z Fixed Size property.
3. Wire an
Arithmetic node to the
Z Fixed Size property and change the mode to
Expression.
4. Open the Expressions editor and enter
XSplineCoords.z. This will now scale the segments between the RailClone gizmo's location on the Z axis and base spline.
Staircase with ArchThis is a little trickier because RailClone can't currently scale a segment between two splines. The workaround is to use two generators - one for the top of the stairs and one for the bottom. You then combine them using a clipping spline to slice at the point where they intersect. To do this:
1. Draw a spline for the stair angle but complete it so that it's a closed shape - like this
2. We're going to use this spline for
both the path and for clipping so we need to tell RC to only put stairs on the angled section. To do this, select the spline segment and change the
Material ID to
1, change the remaining segments to
ID 2.
3. Create a generator for the top of the stairs and wire the spline to both the
Spline and
Clipping Spline inputs.
4. Go to
Properties > Limits and activate
material ID. Leave it at the default value of
1. This will now only create steps on the angled spline with the same ID
5. Add the tread segment and set the
Deform Mode to
Stepped and the Z
Alignment to
Top.
6. Adjust the
Z Fixed transform to push the step above the spline, we're going to cut off everything below the spline in the next steps.
7. Change the generator's
clipping mode to
Exclude and set the axis to
X or
Y depending on the view you created your spline in. You'll now have the top of your stairs like this:
8. To create the bottom we'll do something similar. Create another generator and
two new
spline objects. Wire one to the
Spline input and the other to the
Clipping Spline input.
9. For the clipping spline, pick the same spline as we created in step 1. For the path Spline pick a spline to define the bottom of the stairs. The start and end points must align exactly with the top stairs spline.
10. Set the
Clipping projection to
X or
Y and set the mode to
Include11. Add the step segment and set the mode to either
Vertical or
Stepped depending on the effect you'd like to achieve.
The final graph actually looks pretty simple:
As always, it's easier to see these things in action so I've attached a sample file with this example and a couple of other facade elements based on the use of the same technique.
I hope that helps, please let me know if you have any further questions.
Many thanks!
Paul