You can create simple and complex seating plans with our Seat Plan Creator ranging from small local theaters to large multizone stadiums and arenas. Your ticket buyers will be able to pick their own seat(s) or have the platform choose the 'best available seat' for them.

 This article describes step by step how to create a single or multizone seating plan. After creating your seating plan you can assign seats to certain seating categories and ticket types. 

See how it looks

 Key features

• Use one or more zones to manage seats by section.
• Draw and manage your seats per zone with easy alignment to neighbouring zones.
• Use duplications of zones to speed up your build.
• Rotate zones to match the right orientation.
• Keep overview of your different floors with layers.
• Define a focal point for automatic seat assignment with our 'best available seating' (BAS) algorithm.

You need this to succeed

• The seat plan creator is available for Organisers and Channel Administrator.
• For optimal performance you should use the latest version of the Google Chrome Browser.
• Internet Explorer and mobile browsers are not supported.

The quick way to awesomeness

1. Get to know the interface
2. Plan your build carefully
3. Create your first zone
4. Add seats to your zone
5. Duplicate the zone(s)

Do this step by step

1. Get to know the interface

2. Plan your build carefully

A good start is half the job done. As we are going to use zone duplication for quicker builds and because some things cannot be changed afterwards, you need to think things through before you start.

• Look for identical zones in form as well as in seat configuration. These are the zones you will duplicate. Zones can be rotated, so the orientation doesn't matter.
• You can duplicate several zones at once. So you might want to consider duplicating a combination of zones rather then a single zone. Look for recurring sections as well.
• You can't switch zones from layer, so identify which zone should be in which layer.
• A zone is not necessarily bound to or defined by a price. This can be spanned over several zones. If possible divide your seating plan in zones based on location rather than on price. Note that the zone title is used to identify the seat e.g. 135 row 24 seat 3

3. Create your (first) zone

Now that you have identified the zone you can use to duplicate, let's start. The easiest way to build a zone is to draw a polygon with the correct number of points. We will change its form afterwards as you get an indication of the number of seats when editing the zone and not when creating it.

3.1 Draw your initial polygon

• Select the 'Draw zone' tool.
• Zoom in to a point where you can see the gridlines comfortably.
• Draw the zone with the required number of points (4 in this case). Don't forget to close the polygon by connecting.
• Once a section is drawn, the size of the section is shown next to it.

3.2 Edit your zone to the desired size and form

• Use the 'Selection tool' and select your zone by clicking on it, drawing a rectangle or a polygon around it. The selected zone will be highlighted and appear in the 'Selection' window on the right-hand side.
• In the 'Selection' window, click on 'Edit' (which will change to 'Done' when clicked). The corners of the zone will be highlighted and the number of seats will appear on each section. Note: you can change the name of the zone here as well.
• Click on the corner and drag it to the required direction. The number of available seats will change dynamically so you can see when you have reached the desired length.
• Use the grid to align your zone.
• As pan is not yet available you will have to use zoom instead. When zooming in, the plan will always move to the direction where your mouse pointer is. So, if you want to pane to the right you need to zoom out, move the mouse to the right and zoom in again. It might seem a bit tricky in the beginning, but once you get the hang of it, it works just fine.
• When you are satisfied with the result, click on 'Done' to save your changes.
• Don't forget to save your seating plan by clicking on 'Save' in the upper right corner.

4. Add seats to your zone

Once your zone is build, it's time to add seats. After selecting the zone with the selection tool and double clicking it, the Seat configurator will pop up. You can also click on 'configure seats' in the 'Selection' window.

The seat configurator is a powerful tool which lets you add, remove, transform, rotate and label your seats to match reality. This how-to will only cover the basics.

4.1 Drawing, selecting & removing seats

Position your screen in such a way that you can fully view your zone by using the "Pan" (upper menu) and "zoom" (scroll) tools. Then in the upper menu select the "Seats" tool. You have two options to draw seats:

1. Add row: adds a single row of seats
2. Add block: adds multiple rows of seats

Your first click will set the first seat. If you move around with your cursor a preview is shown of your row or block together with a label of how many rows and seats you are creating. Finish your selection by clicking the location of the final seat.

Note that the orientation of your drawn rows is important. The fact that you draw a row means that the seats in this row are physically next to each other. The adjacency of seats within 1 row is used for Best Available Seating and autofilling labels and ranking.

Selecting a seat will color the seat yellow. The supported selection actions found under the "Select" action are:

1. by Seat: select seat by seat
2. by Box: select different rows by drawing a rectangle (created by the "Add row" or "Add block" actions)
3. by Logical Block: select different rows by selecting the row (created by the "Add row" or "Add block" actions)
4. Invert: deselect the current selection and select all other seats that weren't previously selected in this zone
5. Select all: select all seats in this zone
6. Clear: clear all selections

We recommend that you try and create as much seats as possible with one "Add block" action to ensure automatic creation of the row coordinate (see below). As an example we'll now make room for a staircase in the middle of this plan. You can do this by selecting the seats you want to remove by clicking the "Select" action and "by Seat" sub action and then press the "Delete" action.

The delete action will cause each row to be split in separate rows. You can notice this by using the default "by Logical Block" selection method.

4.2 Rotation & transformation

Once your general layout of your seats matches reality in the number of rows and number of seats; it's time to tweak the plan to match reality in visualization.

You can change the visual look and feel of a selection by selecting the desired rows and then picking the "Transform" action. This has two sub actions:

1. Straight: used to add or decrease spacing between seats
2. Curve: used to add a curvature to the selection

It's also possible to rotate your selection by clicking the "Rotate" action and then dragging the rotate icon.

4.3 Extensions

Sometimes you want to add or remove a seat to an existing row, rather than drawing a new row. This is possible by dragging the red handles on the edge of the rows. This will add or delete an equal amount of seats for each row of the selection in the direction of your drag action.

4.4 Labels & ranking

Before we cover labels and ranking, let's first review why it might be important to draw multiple rows at once using a block or extending a row rather than just drawing a new seat.

To calculate whenever we want to increment a label, we need to know what the logical coordinate is of the seat. This coordinate is also important to identify which seats are next to each other for the Best Available Seating algorithm. The row of a seat is actually the Y coordinate, the seat number is the X coordinate. These coordinates are generated accordingly:

• Adding a row: will always start on row 1. The X coordinate of each seat is incremented from left to right 1..x.
• Adding a block: will always start on row 1. The X coordinate of each seat is incremented from left to right 1..x. The y coordinate is incremented for each extra row you draw within the selection top to bottom 1..y
• Extending a row: the X coordinate is incremented when added to the right and decremented when adding to the left. The minimal left coordinate is "1".
• Deleting a a seat by extending: will decrement the X coordinate.
• Deleting a seat using the delete action: will split the row in two rows. The X coordinates are retained for the section left of the deletion, the section right of the deletion will start on the X coordinate of the deleted seat.

If you messed up the row creation, don't fear. It's possible to set this row coordinate manually by selecting the "Row coordinate" action. This will show the row coordinate for each seat and enable you to enter the row number for the current selection. This action will also prefill the row label with this value.

Here for example, after deleting row #3, you do not want the new third row to be labeled as number 4. So you need to select the row of which you with to update the row coordinate, and use the field in the upper left corner to change this. Repeat by changing 5 to 4.

Now that each row has the correct row coordinate you can use the label wizard to add (alpha)numerical labels with prefixes, suffixes and delimiters. As previously mentioned this wizard uses the row coordinate to know when it should increment his row label. E.g. all seats with row coordinate 1 become "A", 2 becomes "B" and so on.

First select the required seats and then pick the "Labels" action and then the "Mark" sub action. The label wizard will pop up. Set your "First" value, "Step" (number to increment" and pre/suffices for row/seat number sections and press apply.

5. Duplicate your zone

Huray! Your zone is ready to be duplicated to finalize your seating plan.

• Using the 'Selection' tool, select the zone(s) you wish to duplicate. The idea is, if possible, you start with one zone and expand to two, four and so forth.
• Right click on the selected zone(s) and choose 'Duplicate'.

•  Select the duplicated zone(s) which you can then drag to the right position.

•  Using the small rotate icon, you can rotate your zone in the desired direction to make the edges of the zones fit. You can use zoom to match the zones perfectly.

You can now repeat the above steps until you have finished the complete seating plan. In this case the end result looks like below.