category: User Guide title: Exhibition spaces — front-of-house space allocation

Exhibition spaces — front-of-house space allocation

Where the Strongrooms module manages back-of-house storage, Exhibition spaces manages your front-of-house: galleries, halls, display cases, plinths, vitrines. It tracks how much physical or wall space each room has, what's currently on display, and warns you before you over-commit a space.

What's different from Strongrooms?

Adding an exhibition space

1. Go to AHG Plugins → Exhibition spaces (or the /exhibition-space/browse URL).
2. Click Add exhibition space.
3. Fill in:
   • Name (required) — e.g. "Gallery 3 – Modern Wing"
   • Type — Gallery / Hall / Display case / Plinth / Vitrine
   • Building + Floor (optional but useful for large institutions)
   • Capacity + Unit — leave blank if you don't want capacity enforcement; otherwise pick a unit (linear wall metres, display cases, plinths, square metres) and enter the number
   • Lighting target (lux) — optional, captures the target light level for conservation purposes
   • Notes
4. Save. You'll land on the space's detail page where you can start adding placements.

Placing an information object in a space

From the exhibition space's detail page:

1. Scroll to the Add a placement form at the bottom.
2. Enter the Information object ID — the numeric id of the record (e.g. 1234). Tip: the id appears in the URL when you view an information object.
3. Units used — how much of the space's capacity this placement consumes. For a wall-mounted painting needing 2.5 linear metres, enter 2.5. For a sculpture on its own plinth, enter 1 (one plinth).
4. Starts + Ends — the date range the object will be on display. Leave both blank for an open-ended placement (rare but supported).
5. Notes — optional remarks about the placement.
6. Click Place.

Capacity is date-aware

This is the most important difference from strongrooms. Two placements only conflict if their date ranges overlap.

Example: Gallery 3 has a 10 linear-metre wall.

• Placement A — Painting X, uses 8 m, Jun 1 – Aug 31. ✓
• Placement B — Painting Y, uses 9 m, Sep 1 – Nov 30. ✓ (No overlap. Even though 8+9=17 exceeds 10, they're not in the gallery at the same time.)
• Placement C — Sculpture Z, uses 5 m, Jul 15 – Sep 30. ✗ Rejected — between Jul 15 and Aug 31, this would put 8+5=13 m on a 10 m wall.

When a placement is rejected for over-capacity, the system tells you the date range and the amount of overflow, so you can shrink the placement, shift its dates, or pick a different space.

Removing a placement

From the space's detail page, each placement row has a delete button (visible to logged-in users). Removing a placement frees up the capacity immediately for that date range.

Digital Twin Builder (visual layout)

Every space has a Digital Twin Builder (the Digital Twin Builder button on the space page, or /exhibition-space/{slug}/builder). It turns the placement list into a visual layout you arrange by hand.

• Add an object — search by title in the left panel; selecting it drops it on the canvas. Set Initial size (units) first to record its capacity footprint on drop.
• Arrange — drag objects around the canvas; use the corner handles or the Rotate / Smaller / Bigger buttons in the Selected object panel.
• Floorplan — upload a floorplan image (optionally with real-world width/height in metres); it becomes the canvas background and the floor of the 3D walkthrough.
• Size vs scale — Size (units) is the capacity footprint (feeds the capacity meter); the Smaller / Bigger buttons set the display scale (how large the object appears, including in the 3D walkthrough). They are independent.
• 3D orientation — for a 3D object, a Tilt X / Tilt Z (degrees) panel appears. Leave blank for the automatic guess, or enter 0 / 90 / -90 / 180 to stand a model upright. (Turning on the spot is the Rotate buttons.)
• Changes save automatically.

3D Walkthrough (virtual gallery)

The Walkthrough button (/exhibition-space/{slug}/walkthrough, public — no login) opens a first-person 3D gallery built from your layout:

• The floorplan is the floor; 3D objects load as real interactive models (GLB/GLTF/OBJ/STL/PLY), 2D objects hang as framed pictures on the walls, and PDFs render their first page.
• Desktop: click to enter, W A S D / arrows to walk, mouse to look, mouse-wheel forward/back, click an object for details, right-click to free the mouse and scroll the panel, V to open the full record, left-click / Esc to close, H for the on-screen controls.
• Mobile / touch: drag to look, pinch to zoom, tap an object for details, and tap a numbered walk-to button to travel to it.
• A rotating preview of 3D objects appears in the details panel.

Browsing your spaces

The browse page (/exhibition-space/browse) shows every space with:

• Current utilisation — a progress bar showing what fraction of capacity is in use today (not for any other date — for that, open the specific space)
• Current placements — how many information objects are currently on display in this space

The progress bar turns amber at 70% and red at 90% of capacity, so you can spot pressure at a glance.

Deleting an exhibition space

You can delete an empty space (no placements). A space with placements is blocked — remove the placements first. This is a safety check, not a deletion of placement history per se; you can always delete the placements then the space.

What this doesn't (yet) do

• No best-fit allocator — the system tells you when a placement won't fit, but doesn't suggest alternatives.
• No lighting/temp/humidity monitoring — the lighting_lux_target field is captured but not actively monitored. Pair with your environmental monitoring system out-of-band.
• No automatic placement from an exhibition — if you have a curated exhibition with an object list, the placements still need to be entered here individually. Future work.

Quick links

• Browse all spaces — /exhibition-space/browse
• Add a space — /exhibition-space/add (requires login)
• Digital Twin Builder — /exhibition-space/{slug}/builder (requires login)
• 3D Walkthrough — /exhibition-space/{slug}/walkthrough (public)
• Strongrooms (sibling module for back-of-house storage) — /strongroom/browse