When creating stairs, one often uses a tile material for the treads. The tile material usually has a model graphic front pattern to which the appearance asset slaves. In-plane language, this means one may align the tiles to the treads for rendering.

In the case below I refer to a monolithic staircase that was modeled by sketching the boundaries, treads, and stair path. Note that the tread does not allow one to align the material to the tread if one does not first choose to edit the stair.

One can paint the surfaces using materials.

The Remove Paint surface does not work on the treads, although it does work on the risers. One must therefore repaint the tread surface with something else if one wants to “remove” the paint.

Once you are in editing mode you can also manipulate the material appearance asset through the graphic model pattern.

Click on the stair, then click on Edit Stairs.

Tab to one of the model patterns to align them to something else or move or rotate the pattern. The appearance asset translation and rotation will follow. Shown below is the trade before manipulation.

After manipulation, the stair is as follows. The shaded mode exposes the model pattern.

Switch out to realistic display mode to show the appearance asset. The stairs now look much more presentable.

Note: depending on the nature of the stairs, this is the kind of job you would leave to an intern to complete as it can get a bit tedious.

If you need help adopting Revit or BIM in your practice, please contact Micrographics so we may be of assistance.