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Auditorium Maker Help July 8, 2018

AUDITORIUM MAKER 2019

HELP For Revit ® 2016, 2017, 2018 & 2019 About Auditorium Maker

The process of Auditorium seating layout and design can be time

consuming. Every time a layout changes, one must be able to see how

those changes impact the spectators. Even though there

are tools like the array tool, this still leaves a lot to be desired when

editing or creating a seating layout.

Auditorium Maker Help. © Maker Software LLC �1

Auditorium Maker greatly reduces the amount of time for seating layouts and other seating design

tasks.


Auditorium Maker allows you to sketch a layout for seating and optimize the layout for maximum

efficiency. It can automatically label seats, rows, seating sections. It supports varying seat widths

in the same row. It can easily create a camera view from the spectators' seat and label the view

for client presentations and design testing.

The software includes the necessary families. You can customize them to your needs and use

your own as you wish. With a simple sketch using model lines, you can generate and lay out

seating much faster than possible manually or using the array tool.

*New: Supports Revit 2018 and 2019.

Before Using Auditorium Maker Project Parameters Auditorium maker needs its parameters to function properly. The parameters will be

automatically added to your Revit ® project. When you run Auditorium Maker for the first time, it

creates these parameters. Auditorium Maker needs to know the width of each of your seats, so it

creates a shared parameter which tells the software how wide each seat is. There are also other

parameters that label each seat number, row number and seating section.



Load a Seating Tag (optional) To label the seats, there is a tag family that is included with

Auditorium Maker. This tag will be loaded automatically if

you would like. You can also customize it as needed. It is

only there as a basis for your own custom tags.

Prepare your families to use. Auditorium Maker comes with sample families that you can use. They are loaded automatically

and you are prompted to load them. If you would like to use your own, ensure the families you

plan to use for the seating are of the "Furniture" category. This can be checked by placing your

seating family into the project and hover your mouse on the family that is placed. It must say it is

of the "Furniture" category. If not, edit the family and change it. See below.

The “Furniture” category is the only category of

objects Auditorium Maker supports at the moment.

You may use a level based or a Work Plane based

furniture family. When creating a seating section,

Auditorium Maker will look at your sketch lines and

determine what level/Work Plane to host your

seating family onto based on sketch lines' Work

Plane.

The base point for the seating family should be

right in the center of the family. You can open the

sample files folder: “%Programdata%

\Autodesk\ApplicationPlugins” folder or if you

installed the Autodesk Exchange or - “C:\Program

Files\Auditorium Maker 2019\" if you purchased Auditorium Maker elsewhere. Go to "...\Families"

folder and load the sample seat family into your project, insert the family into a floor plan and and

click on the family instance. Do not modify the families in the folder above. Save a copy and

modify the copy. These families are used internally by the software when starting a new project.

Make sure the furniture family contains an “Offset” parameter. See below.

If the family doesn’t have this “Offset” parameter, Auditorium Maker will lay out your rows at the

same Z-height above Work Plane. If you start a furniture family using the “Furniture.rft” template,

the family will have this parameter which allows you to control the Z-height above the Work


Base Point of Family Should always be in the

center.


Plane where to place the

family. Auditorium needs this in

order to adjust the height of

each seat above the Work

Plane. If the family was created

in a more recent version of

Revit (2015 and above), it

should contain this parameter

already. Don't use Revit's

default Seating-Auditorium

family. This family does not

contain the "Offset" instance

parameter that is needed for

Auditorium Maker to function

normally. Even on Revit 2017 the family has not been updated. Download a furniture family from a

manufacturer via http://www.Seek.Autodesk.com. Families can also be found by searching your

manufacturer’s website for Revit seating families. Many

manufacturers provide ready to use seating families.

There is also an adaptive family which is used by

Auditorium Maker to create a sight line which you can use

for clash detecting against other seats. This can be

customized, but must be a 2 point adaptive, otherwise,

Auditorium Maker will not run the Sight Line tool.

Sketch Creation Draw the sketch for the seating section. For Arc Seating Layout:

open your project file. Use the “Set Work Plane” tool

to set your Work Plane to any reference plane that is

parallel to your levels. Sketch your model lines. Use

model lines to create your sketch. Auditorium

Maker will host your seats to the same work plane/

level that your model lines are hosted to. Make sure

sketch contains an arc as the inner row. This arc will


All seats will point to this point.

Sight Line Family

http://www.Seek.Autodesk.com


tell Auditorium Maker where the center point of your seating is

located. See the image.

The arc will also tell Auditorium Maker where to start placing

seating. All other rows will use the same center point location

and point the seating towards this center point. You can turn on

the arc center point in Revit by clicking on the arc in the sketch

and checking the "Center Mark Visible" check box in the family

instance properties dialogue box. Important - all of your sketch

lines must be assigned to the same work plane. Failure to do

this will result in Auditorium Maker canceling the seating section

creation.

*New: Linear Seating Sections are supported

For Straight Seating Layouts:

Go to Auditorium Maker Settings> Seating Section Tab> Select

“Straight Rows”

Similar to above, draw your seating section and use a line

instead of an arc as the first layout line.

Note: Auditorium Maker looks for straight lines as the

first row of seating. It will not allow you to select arcs if

your settings are set to “Straight” as the row seating. Fix

your settings before editing/creating a seating section

or row.

Set your options in the Auditorium Maker Settings dialogue.



When laying out your seats for the first time, you can choose 3 different families per row. The

“Left Aisle” and “Right Aisle” seating type are the seats that are

located along the aisle. The “Inner” seating type are the seats in the

middle of the row. After creating the seating section, when you edit

the row, you can create rows with almost any seating arrangement.

Make Seating Section To use the tool, hover your mouse on a sketch line and hit tab key. Revit

should highlight all line work as a loop. If it doesn't, your sketch

needs to be closed. Once you have the sketch loop selected, click

the "Make Seating Section" tool. Then, select your sketch arc that

represents the layout line of your first row of seating. This is the

same arc as the one that determines the center point of your

seating section. Once selected, Auditorium Maker asks the section

number/letter of the new seating section. Entering this is optional.

Auditorium Maker then asks you how you want to number your

rows. This can allow for “New York” numbering as needed.


Seats are created in a counter clockwise

fashion.


Select Seating Tools Select Row/Section/Aisle Seats After your seats are labeled properly and they are laid out by

Auditorium Maker, you may then use the “Select Seating”

tools. The “Select Seating” tools should work as long as

Auditorium Maker tools were used to lay out the seats.

One way to use the select seating tools is for example: Hold

down the CTRL Key and Select some seats first and then click

on “Select Row of Seats”. This will select the rows of those

particular seats from that particular seating section. Just as shown

in the image above.

Another way is to select the “Select Row of Seats” tool first, then select all of the seats of the rows

you would like to select, then press “Finish” button on the top left of the user interface. In other


Curved seating sections created.

Linear seating sections created.


words, you should be able to select the seats first or select the tool first, similar to how the rest of

the Revit® tools are designed.

Keep in mind, the select seating tools will not select the row layout lines. Those are left in place

in case the rows have to be modified with the modify rows tool.

Modify Seating Section Tool The modify seating section tool will redo your seating according to your current settings. Before

using this tool, you should check that your settings are the way you would like them by going to

the “Auditorium Maker Settings” button. Auditorium Maker will use the settings that have been set

in the settings dialogue. Once you have the settings you would like, click the “Modify Seating

Section” tool and follow the prompts at the bottom of the screen.

Modify Row Tool The modify row tool works much the same way as the modify seating section tool. When

modifying a row, you would need an arc that represents you new row layout line. This arc may be

the one generated by Auditorium Maker or a new one you draw. It must be: an arc, a model line,

and it should be on the same sketch plane as the existing sketch of the seating section. This is

because the seat elevations will be replaced for the same seat elevations.

Also, If you create your own row layout line, you will need to delete the existing (orange) layout

line Auditorium Maker has generated.

Once you have selected a seat and a row layout line, you will be presented with the dialogue to

customize your row. Your row may include as many seating widths as you desire, as long as it fits

inside that row. The “Angle Left in Row” must be greater than zero. See image below.

The seats are created in a counter-clockwise fashion. For example: the seats on the top line of

the table would be the seats most clockwise. The last row in the table would be the seats most

counter clockwise. See illustration below.



Sight Line Tool The sight line tool will create a perspective view by simply clicking

on a seat family and clicking on a “point of focus” family. This family

is included with Auditorium Maker and will be loaded automatically

if you choose to load the families when prompted. Before using the

sight line tool, you should configure the height above the seat (Z

height) that you would like the camera to be placed. The default

height is 4’0” above origin the seat family. Go to the Add-Ins

tab>“Auditorium Maker” panel> “Auditorium Maker Settings” . Click

the “Sight Line” tab. This distance is called the “Camera height


Seats are created in a counter clockwise

fashion.


above seat”. See image.

You must also configure how far back from the center of the chair the camera will be placed. This

distance is called the “Camera set back distance from seat”. See image below.

The “Seat Family Orientation” is a setting that flips the X axis and Y axis directions when placing

the camera. The reason why this option exists is because some Revit families are created facing

South in plan view and others are created facing north in plan view. See images.

It ensures that the “Camera set back from the seat” always places the camera towards the rear of

the seat when a user enters a negative number for that distance. If this option did not exist,

certain families would cause the Sightline tool to place the camera forward from the seat instead

of backwards.

Auditorium Maker loads a family called “Point of Focus”. This family is intended to be used for

pointing the camera towards this point. You can customize this family or use another one, such as

a person. As long as the family is a type that can be placed by a single point. See illustration.


If in family editor, seating family faces south, use the “South”

option.

If in family editor, your seating family faces north, use the

“North” option.


*New: Sightline and view will update if the seat has been moved. If a sight line is created for a

seat, the row or seating section is edited, the previous created views will be removed as well as

the previous created sight line elements.

Worksharing with Auditorium Maker Auditorium Make has been tested with Worksharing enabled. Because of the way it edits the

seating arrangements, for best performance, it is recommended you check out the workset that

you are placing your seats onto. This will greatly speed up the process of editing rows and

seating sections.

Manual Installation Instructions 1. Download manual install files from Makersoftwarecompany.com/download

2. Close out of Revit.

3. Create a folder on your hard drive called “C:\Program Files\Auditorium Maker 2019” (you may

place this on another folder or drive letter as needed). Make sure this folder is not read-

only. Auditorium Maker needs to be able to write to the configuration.xml file regularly to

update the options.

4. Unzip all install files into this folder.

5. To register Auditorium Maker, copy the license.license file that you received from Maker

Software and replace the existing license.license file in the existing installation folder (usually

“C:\Program Files\Auditorium Maker 2019\license.license”) Note: This license file must

match the hardware ID of the machine that you are installing onto.

6. Open the “Auditorium Maker 2019.addin” file in a text editor. Edit it to point to the location of

the Auditorium Maker 2019.dll file. For example, if you copied all the files to the “C:\Program

Files\Auditorium Maker 2019” folder you need to make sure your addin file says this for the

“<Assembly>” portion:

<Assembly>C:\Auditorium Maker 2019\Auditorium Maker\Auditorium Maker 2019.dll</

Assembly>

7. Save the text file.

8. Copy the “Auditorium Maker 2019.addin” file to the addins directory, this should be in this

folder:



“C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\Revit\Addins\2016\Auditorium Maker 2019.addin”

9. the folder for 2016 above will be according to the version of Revit you would like to install the

software to. If you want the software to be in 2016, 2017. 2018 and 2019 please copy this

“Auditorium Maker 2019.addin” file to all of the respective folders for each Revit version.

10. Restart Revit to make sure registration/registration goes through.


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