Guide To Designing Stairs and Laying Out Stair Stringers. In This Article. Related Articles. Project Date Start Stair building is one of the most complex aspects of carpentry. My experience is that a good and accurate design is the only way to. I made these drawings on an. Quick. CAD, which I. At first I hated Quick. CAD because. it was bass ackwards from all the CAD programs I had used years. I ignored the program for a couple of years, and eventually. I took the time to struggle with it and most importantly read the. Eventually I. figured out the darned thing, and now I cant live without Quick. CAD. Without CAD software, stairs can be laid out on paper, using. When complete, you can use a ruler to take. But. care needs to be taken to. I would recommend using as large a sheet of. Wal Mart. The larger the scale used say. Another alternative is a special. Shalla. net. This spreadsheet calculates all the necessary dimensions for. The spreadsheet does the. Identifying The Stair Parts. Stringers Stair stringers red arrow are the notched boards that. Stairs Software Cad' title='Stairs Software Cad' />Stringers are the structural support for the. You can think of stair stringers as sloping floor joists. Profession/Detailed-stairs-editor-arcon-evo.png' alt='Stairs Software Cad' title='Stairs Software Cad' />Ive seen a couple of designs on other websites recently for steep spacesaving stairs. Using those ideas as inspiration Ive come up with a simple way to build a. CAD Blocks collections for architecture cadblocks. AutoCAD and other CAD software to use. Compare CAD Software FreeCAD vs BRLCAD. Compare reviews, features, pricing, and use cases. See screenshots, and feature sets. Risers Treads On this project the riser boards are painted white and the treads are. Riser boards are not necessarily required. Without riser. boards, you have open riser stairs. Note that there are 3 stair treads but 4 risers. Three of the risers are painted white, and the top riser is bare. Riser vs. Riser Board Whats The DifferenceTechnically, the riser is just the vertical distance. Riser boards cover the riser area, thus preventing. Open Risers This set of tall stairs have open risers, which simply. Note About Tall Stairs Your local building code. In my area, the maximum height of a single section of stairs is 1. The stairs shown here were just under that. If the vertical. I wouldve had to build a. Tread Nosing Stair tread nosing is just the small overhang. Stair nosing may or may not be required by your local building. AND. Without nosing, the stairs will actually take up more. Update Rollup 2 For Windows Xp Media Center Edition'>Update Rollup 2 For Windows Xp Media Center Edition. Since nosing allows a. Nose depth of 34 inch to 1 14 inch is usually acceptable. I typically use a nose depth of one inch when. Nose Line If the top front corners of all the stair treads were connected with an. Nose Line. All of the tread noses should touch this line, but small deviations. When designing indoor stairs such as basement. Building codes normally require 6 8 of clearance above the entire. This dimension is the same height as a standard door. The reasoning is if a person doesnt hit their head on a. Creating The Stair Layout Step 1. Determine heights of. This determines the rise. The distance from the deck surface to the floor, sidewalk or deck. Then some math must be done. If a certain riser height is. Or. use the riser height of the pre cut stair. This gives the number of risers steps needed. Lets use an. example of 2. Homely Software System Review more. Oops. you cant have half a step. We can have. either 4 or 5 risers. So 4 risers will be our choice. Note that the number of risers is not. Suppose a house has one room. A deck. could be built this way, with several different levels, each 6 to 8. Thats a lot of trouble to avoid. Step 2. Determine the thickness. On most decks this is simply one inch, the thickness of. But. there are extra thick deck boards available I keep. Step 3. Lay out the heights of. UPPER SURFACES of the stair treads. These are the surfaces you walk on, and the surfaces that the. First. We subtract the. Then. Then we subtract the. And so. Laying this out is much easier on paper or a CAD system than. I suppose you. could draw layout lines on the deck support posts, or you could. Step 4. Subtract the thickness. If using pre cut stringers, hold the stringers in a position so. Of course, the. stringer must be held with the horizontal cuts level, or else. Step 5. Determine a starting. On many decks and porches, the top riser will determine the. Step 6. Determine the final. The important geometry is the location of the front edge. Common tread materials for exterior decks are Two 54 x 6 deck boards, which gives a tread width of about 1. Two 2x. 6s which gives a tread width of about 1. This. certainly works for indoor treads but may not be acceptable for. In this example well use a pair of 54 x 6 deck boards, which. Step 7. Subtract the nose. The nose is usually one inch. Nose distances of 34. Step 8. Subtract the riser. Riser materials are usually 1x. Sometimes 2x lumber is used 1 thickSee the next drawing for this. Step 9. Repeat steps 6, 7 and 8. In other words, now that the first riser outer surface has been. This gives us the location of the front edge of the second. Back off the nose overhang to get the outer surface of the. Back off the riser thickness to get the vertical cut line on. Step 1. 0Convert stair layout. Draw a line to connect all the points on the stair stringers. Note that this is parallel to the nose line of. Make another line parallel to the first line, 1. This denotes the width of a 2x. In the drawing below, note some interesting patterns The 7. The middle vertical dimensions 6. The lower vertical dimension 5. The 1. 0. 0. 0 horizontal dimensions are the effective. This is the actual tread width minus. If you took a birds eye. The 9. 2. 5 horizontal dimension is the effective tread. When. the risers are nailed onto the front edges, the effective tread. And all the remaining tread. One benefit of a simple 2 dimensional CAD program is that you get. Note that some of. You. remember the Complementary Angle Theorem from high school. Its kinda intuitive. A really powerful benefit of CAD software is the ability to. From these points the angled. This is NOT how most carpenters lay out stair stringers. The. traditional practice has been to use a rafter framing square with. Im not sure. I can explain this process. Basic Stairbuilding. Scott Schuttner, from Taunton. Raiden X Rom. Press, which is available from Amazon and other sources. Your Ad Here 1. Your Ad Here 2. Your Ad Here 3. Your Ad Here 4. Your Ad Here 5. Tiny House Stairs. I have a set of stairs just like this. Its easy, even if youre in the bag. Unless you want to turn around on the stairs. People are scared of them, though. Theyre steep, and they look really weird. So they tend to try to go down them backwards, as if theyre a ladder, which is harder than going down forwards. The single stringer design is on purpose in my case the stairway is in a hallway. Not having a rail or an outer stringer means that you can easily move stuff down the hall, because you can slip the legs of the chair between the treads of the stairs on your way past, or whatever.