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How do I set up my coverage zones and what impact does that have on my design?
Any 3D object can be described by polygons. Each polygon is a flat area with three or more points. Curved surfaces are approximated with many small polygons. These polygons can all be defined as zones within the HOLOPLOT Plan software. Each zone can be set as an audience zone or a boundary zone.
An audience zone is an area of a space where the audience will be standing or sitting. The system will be optimized to achieve the best result on this surface. If set up as boundary zone, the user is able to define whether they would like the area to be ignored (the simulated beams will not consider the area in the simulation process) or actively avoided (the simulated beams will actively try to avoid the area in the simulation process). Within these 2 settings the user can add a level of prioritisation as to whether they would like to prioritise avoiding or covering certain zones. In order to understand how the optimisation and prioritisation of zones is happening it is useful to consider the following two stages of the process:
First, imagine dividing the target area (audience zone) for a beam into grid points. Drivers at the top of the array are assigned to the farthest grid points, while drivers at the bottom are assigned to the closest ones. This assignment shapes the beam.
Next, beam optimization is performed in the target area. You can control the importance of each grid point (the weight) to ensure the farthest grid points meet the target more strictly than the nearby ones.
This concept can be expanded to include avoidance zones. In the example of a zone that has a surface area 5 time the size (5 times the number of grid points) of another, like the stalls of theatre when compared to the stage. If you wanted to prioritise the avoidance of the stage over the coverage of the stalls you would be required to give the stage avoidance a weighting of 5 times greater than that of the stalls.
When working with zones the following principles apply: In general, the less zone segmentation, the better. This approach allows the optimization algorithm to dictate performance and reduces the potential for user error. When setting up zones in a model the user should look to minimise the number of zones by considering the following:
Using the least amount of segmentation on large flat surfaces, with the exception of optimising the coverage for array size and correct localisation (see for further details).
Simplifying curved surfaces down to as few flat surfaces as to still represent the basic geometry of the space.
Standardising the zone naming convention to ensure zones are easy to locate.
Ensuring each area where you require separate control has it's own zone assigned.
Having fewer zone segmentations also helps to reduce both simulation processing time and provides a more efficient workflow as the user has fewer zones they need to consider when setting up beams. The optimization algorithm works by automatically triangulating each zone into a dense mesh. Each individual triangle is represented by it's centre point and it's contribution to the overall result is area-weighted to ensure correct averaging.
