Issues with Creating Seating

[RockMonster]

Hey,

I'm having trouble with creating seating in my theatre. I'm working in a black box, and have to creating new seating blocks for each show. This particular one, I just have a rectangle that I'm trying to fill. The risers I'm working with are 3' deep.

For some reason, when I set the row spacing to 3', I get two half-full rows. It works almost fine at 2' (some weirdness around the edges, I lose a seat or two per row, but I think I can fix that by fussing with the rectangle).

What is it that I'm doing wrong? Here are some screen shots:

[img:left]http://i.imgur.com/UwvXrYS.png[/img]

[img:left]http://i.imgur.com/XunMDOb.png[/img]

[img:left]http://i.imgur.com/nzKLJwm.png[/img]

[michaelk]

Your focus point is probably not exactly normal to the center of the rectangle.

I find it helps to first draw the rectangle, then place a 2D locus point that is exactly aligned with the center of the rectangle, then convert the rectangle to a seating layout and snap to the 2D locus for the focus point.

hth

mk

[RockMonster]

It worked!

Thanks so much, michael.

[RockMonster]

Another question: The buffer around my seats. Why is it there, and how do I get rid of it? The seating insertion in the Getting Started video on the VW site does not have that buffer. I tried resetting preferences to see if that would help, and it hasn't.

Thanks,

Rocky

[michaelk]

Hey

Just noticed that there is now a Focus Front button on the seating area OIP. That would have fixed your original issue. Just keep clicking that button and the seats will face different faces of the square

If you are trying to create existing seating conditions in a theatre its usually easier to do it with just seating symbols one row at a time.

To control the buffer you do it by changing the offset first row value in the OIP, the seat and row spacing and moving the borders of the seating area with the reshape tool.

hth

mk

[RockMonster]

There is also a buffer to either side of the seating. Here it shows the boundary line:

There are about 2' of space on each side between the chairs and the rectangle I set for placing the chairs, so I lose about 1 chair from each row, and a full row of seating.

Offset first row only fixes front and back, not sides. When I do offset it to where I want the front row to be, there is enough space for an additional row to come into the block, but it doesn't. When I offset it far enough back, a row will be cut out, so I expected the program to add a row when there was space. Does that make sense? Screenshot of new offset placement:

[img:left]http://i.imgur.com/eZhRTYy.png[/img]

[michaelk]

Yeah? Use the reshape tool to pull the sides wider and change the seat spacing until you get the results you need.

Not a perfect solution. That's why for many theater applications, it's better to just create rows of symbols (and make symbols of the rows).

hth

mk