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Honeycomb or Checkerboard?Note: This web site is for information only and utilizing this information does not ensure compliance with any federal, state, city or organization regulation related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The CDC-Guidelines concerning COVID-19 require distancing and this challenges many planners in how to place seatings in a room to ensure these guidelines are met. Below you can check whether a honeycomb pattern or checkerboard gives you more seatings. For the honeycomb pattern there are two choices, which we denote as upright and tilted. Depending on length and width of a room, one may give more seats than the other. The CDC recommends a distance of 6 feet between people, which translates into a distance of 8 feet between the center of two people (see Figure 2 below). The minimum distance between the outer rows of seats and the wall can be chosen to be less or more than half of this. Note that in case there is large equipment in the room or space needed for the instructor, the actual number of seats may be smaller. The graphics below (Figure 1) may be helpful to estimate the number of seats that have to be subtracted. If a room is composed of several retangulars, then the optimal seating arrangements can be checked fro each rectangular. For the honeycomb pattern, the grid spacing in one direction is reduced by a factor of 0.866 (see Figure 3 below). Thus, for an 8-feet grid spacing, the shorter distance between rows is only 6.93 feet.
Figure 1: In the graphics above, d indicates the minimum distance from the seat center to the wall. For the honeycomb pattern, the grid spacing in one direction is reduced by a factor of 0.866. Thus, for an 8-feet grid spacing, the shorter distance between rows is only 6.93 feet.  Figure 2:The CDC guidelines recommened a distancing of 6 feet between people, which requires the interpretation given in the left diagram. Figure 3: The honeycomb pattern reduces the space requirement per seat by 13% compared to the checker board pattern. |
