Making the Stairs and Balcony Balustrade

Like everything else in this project, I had to do research on designs are regulations before diving in to model. The images below are all my images I've captured and used as inspiration for my stair case up the side of the house as well as the railing around the balcony. In my design, I decided to use a stair case with a middle stringer like in images 4 and 8 as well as a balustrade for the railings up the stairs and around the balcony. I've chosen to have a glass balustrade as I think it would look much nicer going up the stairs than a concrete slab.

Like the doors, use the straight stair pre-set and then change any parameters and settings to meet personal preference. when adding the hand rail, make sure it is 900mm above the steps (basically set the height to 900mm on the handrails options) as that is the legal height requirement for stair case handrails.

Once the parameters are all set, turn the stairs into an editable poly or at least add the edit poly modifier. the select the back polygon on the top step and drag it out to create a standing area at the top of the stairs.

Next, create a new box and give it a thickness of 10mm and a length of 1200mm (as that's the usually the size of Balustrade glass panels and the usually distance between each panel is usually around 30mm) and then position them going up the stairs as seen in the 2nd image below and eventually follow it around the edge of the balcony and have the handrail follow around by simply extruding it. For the corners of the balcony, smaller panels will need to be made to fit around the corner.

After copying the panes of glass around the balcony, the last thing to do is create the bracket which holds the glass in place. To model this, simply use a cylinder and make the radius 25mm (as the diameter of these types of brackets is usually 50mm) then make the length 30mm (this is the standard size of the part which clips to the step/wall). Inset the top polygon by a small amount and extrude by a small amount to create the rubber part which will hold the glass.

Once that is done, create a new cylinder and this time make it 10mm and create then rubber part then line it up with the other cylinder using the 3D snap tool. Simply attach the two cylinders together then select the two polygons facing each other and then inset and then bridge (to create the screw part which goes through the glass to hold it).

After the model is finished, simply place the the bracket on one of the steps and copy it so there are two side by side then copy those two and place one on every other step as seen in images 2 and 3. When placing them on the panes along the balcony, copy the ones on one of the steps and rotate it 90 degrees and place it at one end of then pane and then copy that to the other side and repeat for each pane as seen in image 3.