Hey. Im making a buisness by an airport. its at a popular vacation spot and more then 75% of the people there dont live there year round. The busness will store cars for the traveling customers over the winter and will be started and driven, once around the parking lot, once a week. Now my problem. I need to find the most efficent way to park as many cars as possible on a weird shape parcel of land (shown below). I need to also figure out which of the parking lot styles would be the best square, offset, or a cobination of the two. Who knows the easyist way I can do this?
Most designers would approach this problem first by brainstorming and then by sketching concepts. Go hire a landscape architecture firm!
In the meantime, here’s some free ideas they probably would think of doing:
Don’t let the customers park their own car, valet it. This lets you cram the cars together, particularly passenger-side to passenger-size if you zig-zag them.
Go 2 or 3 deep like you see in a lot of highrise parking lots. This is a balance between your cost of labor moving the cars around, and the amount you’re earning per car per day.
Look at what the rental car companies do, particularly with their return-line concepts. Maybe two long lines and parallel parking?
Check the design guides and regulations for the city/county you’re designing for. Different cities and counties have different rules for parking stall and aisle widths.
I did a ton of parking layouts for a big retailer on many different sites. You can sometimes squeeze in an extra space or 2 if you use one-way aisles and 60 deg stalls.
Thanks. I was think about that. like with a 6 foot offset. the only problem remaining is that the property is such a weird shape. is there any independent softeware that can do it? i know about parkcad (www.parkcad.com) but that required autocad which is way overkill for what i need and why spend the money to use it once…
Yodayoda3000, do you have autocad? What about Illustrator?
Unfortunately, parking design is not simple enough to automate. Especially when you have such a wierd shaped parcel. And most parcels are wierd shaped.
It will be a little tedious at first, but there are techniques that will make it less painful. Let me know what software you have access to and I’ll show you the tricks I know.
I have neither unfortunatily… Look at what cg said.
Don’t let the customers park their own car, valet it. This lets you cram the cars together, particularly passenger-side to passenger-size if you zig-zag them.
Go 2 or 3 deep like you see in a lot of highrise parking lots. This is a balance between your cost of labor moving the cars around, and the amount you’re earning per car per day.
Look at what the rental car companies do, particularly with their return-line concepts. Maybe two long lines and parallel parking?
What do you think about thoes ideas. Should i just wing it and do it on my graphing calculator?
CG’s ideas are, without a doubt, awesome. The problem that you have is, regardless of business model, you still have to optimize the parking on the given site. The only way to do this is by drafting out different parking configurations and counting up the stalls. There are methods of making this easier; you don’t have to draw out EVERY stall.
You will need to show the client the different configurations and pros and cons of each. After the client decides which configuration matches his business model the best, someone will have to draft, at the very least, a striping plan that can be used by a contractor to paint the stalls in the correct location. I don’t see how you could do all of this without drawings. You should consider asking the client to buy you AutoCAD.
Is the lot paved already? Is the driveway in place? From the drawing you posted it looks undeveloped. If this is the case you’re going to need a Civil Engineer to design the lot anyway. Try to find a CE with retail land development experience and make them do all the dirty work Depending on where you’re located, I might be able to recommend one.
Since the land is undeveloped you are going to need a civil engineer anyway. My advice is to hand the parking portion of the project over to a CE as well. The parking layout is simple in comparison to grading and drainage
I’m not saying you CAN’T do it, just that it’s going to be very painful without any prior experience. You’ll need to have the lot surveyed since it was surveyed so long ago, draw up a lot line adjustment, grading plan, pavment sections, utility plan (if you need storm drains, waterlines, electrical, etc), and a striping plan. These will all need to be approved by the city/county planning department. If they find any part of your plans insufficient, you don’t get a permit.
I have recieved some insanely poor parking layouts from architects and I have cleaned them up, made them meet regulations and actually work for traffic flow. But these files were just shoddy AutoCAD drawings. If someone sent me a digital picture of a model of a parking layout and expected me to draft the construction documents I would die of laughter. At that point it’s a new project for the engineering team anyway. I gurantee you’re not going to get your layout within 0.1" with cutouts.
Why not make a scaled drawing in Illustrator and make a symbol of a car that you can copy/paste, and a symbol of your typical parking space, drive aisle, etc. and move those around.
With the amount of time you have spent discussing this, you could have gone out to the site with a yardstick and orange paint and solved your problem.
Grin and bear it. AutoCAD is pricey, but there are free ways of getting it that aren’t legal. But then you’d need to learn the software. For now, forget automation and use cg’s idea with a good old fashioned pen and paper.
Yes, I’m referring to Adobe Illustrator. As a designer I think you’ll find Illustrator to be a more versatile tool. If you REALLY want to do civil construction documents AutoCAD is the industry standard.
That said, you should do whatever you need to do in order to get your client the information he/she needs. When I wrote my comments above I assumed that the client was ready to start building and didn’t consider the possibility that they might just need to get a feel for the feasibility of the project.
Once you get a design tool in place, AutoCAD or Illustrator, I can help you with the preliminary layouts.
Though I don’t completely agree, I do see your point. In the amount of time I’ve spent responding in this thread I could have done at least 2 conceptual layouts. The point of the discussion isn’t to get work done, it is to learn from each other.
Depending on where you’re located, I might be able to recommend one.
Ill look more into autocad. Its a pain but sounds like a nessary one.