The occasion was a full size mock-up of the Langley Park Transit Center for which we are the architect of record. The center will offer 11 bus bays, of which six are off street and require relatively tight turns to get to. And buses are not all the same, drivers don't all drive the same and the best CAD simulation cannot substitute for the real thing; So we had a 40 foot behemoth navigating cones and painted lines instead of curbs and shelters and two additional ones sitting around as obstacles or additional buses in the center.
The experience made me think, that we architects are in a distinct disadvantage compared to the civil engineers who can do such a layout in just a day. How much harder to simulate the 3-D spaces full size!
