Stair Stringer pattern

[Mr Mike Mills]

Does anyone have a pattern for Stair Stringers? I am making a Dall house for my little girl and would like to cut the stringers with the laser. I will use 1/4" Plywood and if 2 stringers are not enough I will cut more and laminate them. rise will be about 15-1/2" between the floor and ceiling of each level. Run will be 12". I was thinking of having the bottom of the stringer flat and the top will have the notches for the treads. I would use a more decorative pattern if someone had that also. If anyone can help that would be great. Thanks Mike

[Jeff Belany]

What I would do is estimate how many steps you want/need. Make 2 line segments in the proper proportions for a tread/riser and group them together as a right angle. Then duplicate and move the angle to the next position down, continue duplicating with CTRL D and make the number of steps. Group all the steps together and stretch to the exact measurements you need to fill the space you have. Hope that ,makes sense. May not be exacting to the specs of a real stringer but will work for a doll house.

Jeff in northern Wisconsin

[Mike Null]

You can also use the step and repeat feature under the edit menu.

[Ronald Erickson]

A. Have "snap to objects" turned on.
B. The top step will be your "floor" of the upper level. The bottom step will be the "floor" of your lower level. The stringer will rest on your lower floor and fit under your top floor.
C. Your rise should be the measurement of the top of the lower level floor surface to the top of the upper level floor surface.

1. Make your page size 12" (w) by 15.5" (h). Add the thickness of one level of your floor material to the height. (Assuming your floor is .25" thick, your page height would be 15.75")
2. Draw a rectangle with the profile of the step you'd like. I went with 1" wide by .25" high, assuming your floors are also 1/4 inch.
3. Duplicate the rectangle to make the stair treads. Twelve 1 inch treads will leave no overhand off the front of the tread. If you'd like overhang (it looks better), add a few more steps. I made 15 total. The Step and Repeat function that Mike mentioned is a super quick way of making copies. The horizontal and vertical step sizes aren't important at this point.
4. Select all your stair treads and go to Menu Arrange... Align and Distribute... Align and Distribute.
5. Under the Align and Distribute window, on the Align tab, select Left and Top, then apply. It will stack all the stair treads on top of one another. This is important so it can distribute the stairs appropriately in a staircase. If you don't stack them all up, it may not distribute appropriately.
6. Under the Align and Distribute window, on the Distribute tab, select Left and Top again and select the "extent of page" radio button, then apply. It will arrange a staircase filling the page with the treads evenly distributed left to right and top to bottom. (You're not building the steps to scale / to code, so the rise/run doesn't really matter; you'll just want them even.)
7. Now that your steps are arranged in a staircase shape, it's time to trace out the stringer. Create a new layer and lock your tread layer (optional). Now just use the polyline tool on the new layer and trace the steps from the back upper node of the lowest step (the top of your lower floor) to the perpendicular of the next step up. Then from the perpendicular to the back lower node, then up to the perpendicular of the next step, etc. See Image. The lowest step is your "floor" so to speak, which is why you start at the upper back node of the step (on top of the floor is where the stringer should start).

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8. Continue to the top most step. Once at the back node of the top step, double click to end the polyline shape. Now that you have your stringer "cuts", just complete the stringer outline to a pleasing shape with appropriate lines. The top of the stringer will fit under your top floor (with the top floor being the upper most step) and the stringer will rest on your lower floor.

Since the stringer isn't structural (beyond that of a doll) you can add all sorts of cuts and curves to make it pleasing, or you can laminate a decorative piece to the outside of the stringer.

Ultimately this method will just give you the spacing of your stairs without having to do the math.

[Mark Ross]

Mike,

I just purchased an awesome dollhouse pattern from makecnc. They have all sorts of patterns. I only paid around 15 bucks for the pattern and it is the complete house designed and set up for lasering. You might want to check it out, it saved me hours of work.

[Jeff Belany]

Maybe this is too simple but it only took a couple minutes. One in X4 and V10

Jeff in northern Wisconsin