Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill_B
Lots of thought fodder in this thread. I'd like to see some diagrams made to support some of the relocation ideas proposed. Want larger bleacher areas? where? Better routing? sketch out what you mean. No debris zones? how can that be laid out.
Hey, you're not designing a robot for a while, why not try your hand at "venue" design.
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I can't chop up the Load-In PDF at the moment, but I'm thinking you land the two fields in the hall next to 9th street, possibly oozing out into the corner of the two halls. If you keep them the same orientation as now and slide them close together, you can economize on the extra space usually taken up around fields for equipment, storage, aisles, etc. Then pits and all the other miscellanies go in the hall occupied by Newton. Yes, you'd be back to the giant labyrinth of pits, but you have to admit that the packing efficiency is a good bit higher. Plus it keeps the FRC pits completely separate from the stands, which eliminates the need for debris-free lanes, etc. And puts the fields right next to FTC in case any of them are interested in checking things out.
Yes, you could swap this around and have the fields where Newton is, but then you've got a lot of robot traffic all headed in one direction, inevitably crossing the path to the fields for the public. Plus it'd be harder to balance pit vs. field locations to keep travel distances mostly equal.
If you're concerned this puts the fields too close together and could cause cross-talk problems, then you could separate the fields more and fill up the in-between space with scholarship row, the NI and Autodesk stages, etc, etc. More added benefit there in that the public could check out those venues without the safety glasses hassle.
Mind you, that Load-In map is a complete and utter lie. I sure don't recall those spots near the fields for "Spare Parts" and "TV Viewing". And the pit layout was a little different. And that map cleverly doesn't show all the space taken up on the Curie/Archimedes border by a wall o' robot crates not even stacked double high. If space was really at a premium and we really wanted to expand things to fit in bigger bleachers, I would think we could do something better with crates than just shoving them across the aisle. I'll admit it was personally convenient during loadout since our crate was right there, I'd have gladly traded that for more seats around Curie.