Q: ...for a ziggurat I'm working on. Here's the problem. However I make them they always start going into the stucture on which they are supposed to rest.I hope that makes sense.

Any one out there know if there's a fixed 'formula' where if you know the hieght and angle of the incline you make some proper stairs to rest upon them?

A: You don't even need trigonometry for this. But if you know only one side of the triangle and the angle, it would help... The magic is to divide the X and Y projections with the number of stairs N you need: 



          /|

        /  |

      /    |Y

    /      |

  /        |

/_)________|

  a   X



w=X/N

h=Y/N
Then set these numbers for SNAP VALUES (Press Ctrl-A), turn Snap ON (press S) and draw the stairs in the Shaper. The angle will remain the same since you have scalled all sides of the triangle using the same value (similar triangles = same angles, proportionally scalled sides) 



           w

          __

     h  __| |

      __|   |

    __|     |Y

  __|       |

__|         |

|/)_________|

  a   X