Start a layout and draw a room

Start a layout

1. Open Layouts under Tools in the left rail and press New layout. An empty list shows Draw the first layout instead.
2. Choose a start. Under Set for an event: Wedding reception (120 guests), Banquet dinner (200), Ceremony rows (100 chairs) or Cocktail reception (80 standing). Start from a sample room opens a furnished room to look around.
3. Or use Draw your own. Pick a common size or type a width and length, choose a shape (rectangle, L, T, bay, angled corner or alcove) and press Blank room. Draw your own room shape opens an empty floor with the wall tool on.
4. The builder opens. Press Save Layout often. A message offers to keep your changes if you leave without saving.

Draw and change the room

1. Press the fence button, titled Wall Mode, or press W. A strip says “Click to place the first corner of the room.”
2. Click each corner. Click the first corner again to close the room. Shift keeps a wall straight. To type a length, use Next wall and Add wall.
3. Press Stop drawing or Esc. A closed loop of walls becomes a room in the Rooms tab, named and measured, with a floor material you can change.
4. Select a wall to change its Thickness (inches) or tick Curved Wall. Under Items, the Venue Dimensions card sets the room’s width and length and the floor texture.
5. Add doors and windows from the Items tab under Doors & Windows. Click one to place it, drag it onto a wall and press R to turn it.

Let the builder place the tables

In the Items tab, press Build me a layout. Choose the number of guests (1 to 2,000) and a style: banquet rounds, long tables, cocktail reception, or ceremony or theater rows. Tick what else to place, such as a head table, dance floor, bar, buffet, doors and walls. It places tables at legal spacing. This replaces the tables, chairs and items on the plan, keeps the walls, doors and windows, and you can undo it.

Describe your room asks for a first draft from a sentence or two, up to 400 characters. It is a draft to check, not a fire-code review, and when drafts are paused or used up the tool still works by hand.

To trace over a plan you already have, open the View menu at the foot of the plan, choose Floor plan image, add a JPG, PNG or WebP, and set the scale by measuring one known length.

What it does not do

• Nothing is saved until you press Save Layout or Ctrl+S. The builder does not autosave, and the free tool on the website saves only in that browser.
• The scale is fixed at 1 foot to 20 pixels. The grid offers 1, 5 and 10 foot steps.
• The Venue Dimensions card, the properties panel, the ruler and the measuring tool work in feet, even for a venue set to metres. The new layout page and the wall length box follow the venue’s unit.
• A new room is 10 to 300 feet on each side. A saved layout can hold 5,000 objects.
• Doors and windows are ordinary objects. They do not snap to a wall or cut an opening in it. The 3D preview hides them with the nearest wall.
• A traced plan image is a reference only. It is not part of the room, it is not in the 3D preview and it is not in the printout.
• There are no multiple floors or levels.
• If someone else saves after you open a layout, a banner says so. Choose Load their version or Keep mine and save. There is no live view of who else is in the plan.
• A venue with a lapsed paid subscription can open layouts but not save them.

Common questions