Here is a lovely little project I'm working on. The existing steel spiral stair shown here is tight and impractical as well as in a poor location for the floor plan of the house.

I designed a fairly minimalistic steel stair which will be installed in a different location and will be much easier to negotiate. The design process included trying every solution possible in rapid fire succession to make sure I wasn't overlooking anything better. Then developing this with a sketchup model just enough to see how it could look in the space. Then back to the site for more careful measuring and consideration. Then These detailed drawings. The design and detailing allow for a fair amount of "fudging it" and flexibility in adjustment as an inherent part of the design. - I expect to get some good feedback from the steel fabricator as well.