Concert hall design

[damon.sidel]

Has anybody worked on designing a concert hall, lecture hall, or similar? I've been arraying, copying, and re-hosting theater seats for a few days now and I feel like there should be a better way.

This project is at the earliest phase, so we are talking fastest, most conceptual methods possible. I've created the steps of the seating using stairs. I created my own seat as a face-based generic model (and changed the category to furniture).

First I rough in everything with ref planes and detail lines, then draw in the stage and seating steps, then add in the seating. The seating is usually concentric, but that means the radius is different for each row, so I have to array each one separately then re-host those seats to the appropriate step.

Any thoughts? A railing with no rail and each baluster is a chair?! ANYTHING to make this easier/faster/more efficient. Once we settle on a scheme, I'm happy to do it differently, but for now...

NOTE: A coworker tried the railing method and got it to work mostly. We created a baluster with the seat geometry. The biggest constraint is that the railing type has to have a rail in it, so we're just placing it so it goes through the seats.

[Dimitri Harvalias]

I think you're on the right track with the railing Damon.
Since you can't schedule seats you'll need to schedule your railing and divide length by seat spacing to get a seat count.
If you do a bunch of this it might be worth exploring a family that would give you better control using a radial array with equally spaced nested families. That way you can easily swap out your placeholder, design family for the final seating family and more easily maintain any parameters that you might want to schedule during design.

You'll need to change the Top Offset for the baluster. The host can't be the top and the bottom of the baluster and that is the case with no railing.

Edit: Just tested this with a nested chair and I'm not sure it can work. I used a simple extrusion in my test. Just about to hop an a plane but I'll take another look later.

[damon.sidel]

Thanks! Saw your post and gave it a whirl. We didn't have any luck with a nested family, but did if we built the seat directly in the baluster family, no nesting.

I agree about the custom nested family with a radial array. I'll have to look into that. I always have trouble with arrays and radial stuff, so it would be a challenge, but ultimately more useful.

Is there really no way to count the number of balusters in a railing?

[rosskirby]

If I remember correctly, there are a number of pre-made radial (and linear) array seating families on Seek (seek.autodesk.com).

[greg.mcdowell]

I'd role my own curved, line based, arrayed family.

I've done something similar to this for radial parking and it requires, if I remember correctly, something like 6 levels of nested families. I can't take credit it for it though... the setup is pretty much all Dave Baldacchino's work.

If you make the chairs shared and nested you should be able to schedule them individually as well.

The attached should get you started.

[damon.sidel]

Thanks Ross. The seating I found on seek is fixed, not parametric, but I didn't know about seek, so that is great information.

Thank you Greg for sharing the parking families. I'm looking at them now and they are awfully complicated. It will take me some time to figure them out. I'm really not sure why they are so complex, but I'll keep at it. I'll post in the families forum and add a link here when I start working on them.

[SamuelAB]

Either make an amazing parametric family or used the radial array. I've done some theaters before and it's quite the job.

I would not jump into this with no theater design experience as you will be redesigning a whole lot.

[greg.mcdowell]

My apologies. I haven't looked at this family for several years but it seems to be broken. Not sure what the problem is.

I had thought that it would be as "simple" as digging down to the deepest nest level and swapping in a chair for the stripe. It almost works...

I think I've got another family somewhere that might do what you're after. Let me look.

Edit - Yeah, found it. It is based on the parking stall family after all. You'll have to dig down to the lowest level to swap the families out as it stands now. Also, this family was about knowing the number of seats you needed rather than it calculating it automatically but you should be able to tweak the family to get it do what you want.

Good luck!

[damon.sidel]

Greg,

Thank you for the file. I'll give it a go. It's a very complex family. I wish I knew what did what so I was better equipped to modify/simplify it.

I'll let you know how it goes.

[SamuelAB]

Have you tried playing with the angular array? You will save yourself a lot of time in the short run.

Don't worry about crazy families yet, you just need a simple chair for now.

[damon.sidel]

Samuel, I did a few experiments so far. And yes, I kept the chair very simple. Since this has become a family issue, I've posted here:

http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=136488

Greg, I looked at your family and it's complexity makes it very difficult for me to adapt to my purposes. Two things in particular: the radius is not controlled directly, rather the family allows you to change the "height" of the arc, the distance between the springing point and the apex of the arc. That may have been helpful for whatever purpose it was originally created, but doesn't relate to the constructional logic we'll be using (common center point with concentric circles for each tier of seating). Also, when you stretch the length, it makes the chairs wider. We need to use fixed-size seats and change the number in the row, or even better have a maximum and minimum seat size.

Conceptually, this seems so simple: A radial array with parameters for radius and arc length. Then do a little math to calculate the number of seats.

[MikeJarosz]

I've done a large auditorium [20,000 seats]. If you want radial seating and straight lines at the aisles, you will have to use a combination of different width seats to equal the intercepted arc of each row. American Seating (the only mfr I've ever used for this) makes 18" to 22" seats for just this purpose. It's still a nuisance to figure it all out. I haven't done this recently, but at the time, there were reference charts to help. We also tried to avoid the 18" size. There might be software available these days.

I don't know how other manufacturers approach this problem. My guess is that some of the seats that stand free can have variable spaces between them.

Next time you are in a large auditorium, get there early. Standing in a curved row, look down a radius toward the center of the arc and notice how the seats don't line up.

Railings have some suprising unintended uses in Revit. I've seen a ski lift modeled as a railing, and I myself have created a chain link fence using a railing.

[greg.mcdowell]

It is complicated but, from what I remember, it needs that level of complexity to work correctly.

As to the chair, you can dig down to the deepest nested family and swap out a different chair.

And you can, though I'm the first to say it's not going to be easy, reverse engineer the formulas to control for R (radius) instead of H (Segment Height) - http://www.ajdesigner.com/phpcircle/circle_segment_height_h.php

I started to do the work for you and then lost it all 75% of the way there... maybe I'll pick it up again later.

Be forewarned, however, that there are some extraneous parameters in there that aren't needed from it's time as a parking stall.

[SamuelAB]

I hope you got started with the array tool, you'll never get anything done if you wait for a family on this.

You can create the family for the next project.

[MikeJarosz]

I double checked American Seating's website. I found they have BIM models for 19 to 22 inch seats, floor and riser mounted. Some of them are marked "radial". I didn't spend any time figuring out what this has to offer, but you might take a look for yourself.

http://www.americanseating.com/architectural/en/tools-resources/category/133

[Chuckyd67]

Back in the days of ACA, we could get curved seating rows from curtain walls. Has this been attempted in Revit?

[greg.mcdowell]

I'm sure it has. Nest a chair family into a curtain wall panel and go from there.

[MHiermer]

This is what i would have been suggesting aswell, as we did a few years ago for a design concept of a concert hall with 2300 seats. With curtain walls i found it really simple and you get a seat count by the scedule aswell. Worked very well for us! Just use a seat-family for the curtain wall element and define your specific distances in the curtain wall layout!