Floor plan
How to draw your room once, so your staff and your guests both recognise it.
Your floor plan has two sides. Edit layout, covered here, is where you draw the room and place the tables — you usually do this once, then touch it rarely. The live map you work from during service is a different job and has its own page: The service floor.
Both live under Floor plan in the left menu.
Layouts: one venue, several rooms
A venue can keep more than one layout — for example Standard, Concert night and Terrace open. One of them is the default, marked with a star.
Every event picks the layout it runs on, in the event form under Floor layout. Leave it on Venue default layout and the event follows whichever layout is the default at the time. The live map and the guest table picker both follow the event's layout.
In the editor's top bar, the dropdown switches layouts and Layouts opens the manager. Each row shows how many tables and room items the layout holds and how many events use it, and lets you:
- Rename it.
- Duplicate it — the fastest way to build a variant: copy the room you already drew, then move the tables around for the other layout.
- Make it the default.
- Delete it. A layout that an event still points at cannot be deleted — give that event another layout first. Neither can the default; make another layout the default first.
Type a name at the bottom of the manager and click New layout to start an empty one.
Build your floor plan
Open Floor plan, then click Edit layout in the top right.
If the layout is still empty, the builder greets you with Start your floor plan and three choices:
- Start from a template — pick a ready-made layout and adjust it.
- Draw a room — trace your own outline point by point.
- Start from scratch — begin with one empty rectangular room.
The builder has three columns: the palette on the left, the floor in the middle, and the panel on the right. That panel is the inspector while something is selected, and the layout settings while nothing is. Everything you do most of the time is one click away; the settings you touch once a season sit folded away under headings you open when you need them.
The everyday flow
- Drag a table from the palette onto the floor, or click it to drop it in the middle of the view.
- It lands selected. Type its Label, its Seats, its Type and its Section in the panel.
- Drag it into place. Handles resize it, the top handle rotates it, and guides snap it to its neighbours.
- Repeat. Select several tables at once to line them up or rename them in one go.
- Click Save.
That is the whole job for most rooms. The rest of this page is for when you want more.
The palette
Every item you can put on the floor lives here, grouped and with a little picture of how it will look. Drag it onto the floor, or click it to place it in the middle of the view. The search box at the top filters the list.
| Group | What is in it |
|---|---|
| Tables | Round table, Square table, Rectangular table, Booth, High-top, Lounge set, plus ready-made VIP versions of the booth and the lounge set. |
| Seating | Sofa. |
| Bar & stage | Stage, DJ booth, Bar, Cashier. |
| Structure | Wall, Door, Entry, Security, Stairs, Column, Restrooms, Coat check. |
| Areas | Zone, Dance floor, VIP area, Smoking area. |
| Decor | Plant, Text label, Other. |
Only tables can be booked. Everything else is there so your staff and your guests recognise the room at a glance — nobody reserves the bar.
New items land at real-world sizes: a round table is 90 cm across, a bar is 5 m long, a column is 50 cm. Change any of it in the inspector.
The tools
The tool strip sits in the top bar, to the right of the table count.
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
| Select | The normal pointer: click to select, drag to move, handles to resize, the top handle to rotate. Drag across empty floor to marquee-select a group; Shift-click adds to the selection. |
| Draw room | Click around your outline to trace the room, then double-click, click the first corner, or press Enter to close it. Backspace removes the last corner, Escape cancels. |
| Draw zone | The same drawing, but for a named area inside the room — see Zones and sections below. |
| Wall | Drag a line on the floor and a wall appears along it. |
| Measure | Click two points and the distance between them is shown. |
Next to the strip: undo and redo, the Grid switch, Templates, Discard and Save.
The room is the boundary of your venue: tables cannot be dragged outside it, so an L-shaped or irregular room keeps everything honest. A room or a zone can be a plain rectangle or a polygon — Convert to polygon and Back to rectangle in the inspector switch between the two, and a polygon is reshaped by dragging its corners, double-clicking an edge to add one, and double-clicking a corner to remove it.
The inspector
Select one table and the panel shows what you need first:
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Label | The table's name, such as "T12". Every table on a layout needs its own label. |
| Seats | How many people it fits (1 to 50). |
| Type | Standard or VIP. VIP tables are drawn with a crown and a gold ring. |
| Section | The part of the room this table is in, such as "Terrace". You type the name yourself. It is what you search by, and what the live floor plan closes and reopens as a unit. |
Under those sit three headings, folded until you open them. A heading you open stays open while you click from table to table, so setting ten positions is not ten extra clicks.
| Heading | What is inside |
|---|---|
| Position & size | X, Y, Width, Height and Rotation. Once the scale is set these are centimetres; before that they are plain units. The heading itself shows the current size, so you rarely need to open it. |
| Appearance | Shape (round, square, rectangular, booth, high-top or lounge set), Chairs (Chairs, Stools or None around this table) and, for booths and lounge sets, Sofa sides — which sides carry the bench. |
| Advanced | Stage band for standard tables, This table is … cm wide while the layout has no scale yet, and Duplicate in a row. |
Stage band matters when your events sell voucher tiers: 1 is closest to the stage, and a higher tier should get a table nearer to it. Leave it empty for — unbanded —. Select a group of tables and you can band them all in one go.
The padlock at the top of the panel locks an item so you cannot move it by accident — handy for the bar and the walls once they are right. Delete is at the bottom.
Select a room item instead and the panel shows an optional Label such as "Back bar" and whatever that kind has of its own: Hinge and Swing for a door, Pattern for the dance floor (Diagonal lines, Tiles or Plain), which side the Stools sit on at a bar, a Tint for zones and the smoking area, a Font size for a text label, and Thickness for a wall. Position & size is folded below, and Advanced holds Kind, so a mis-dropped bar can become a cashier without redrawing it.
Layout settings
Click on empty floor, or press Escape, and the panel shows the layout itself: its name and one line of help, then:
- Chairs — a tick box. On, chairs are drawn around every table; restaurants and cafés want it, nightclubs usually leave it off. It belongs to the layout and is saved the moment you tick it. Chairs are decoration — guests book a table, never a single chair.
- Scale — the heading shows either the scale or Scale not set. Open it for Set scale from two points; see below.
- Grid — the heading shows the current step. Inside: the grid switch (the same as G and the top-bar button) and the step, 10, 25, 50 or 100 cm. While you drag, alignment guides appear against nearby items and a live readout shows the size and position of what you are moving.
- Background image — put an architect's drawing or a photo behind the floor as a guide. Upload background adds one, the slider fades it, Remove background takes it away. It is only there to trace over — guests never see it.
Set the scale
A new layout works in centimetres from the start. A layout that was drawn before there was a scale shows Scale not set on the Scale heading and works in plain units. Two ways to fix that:
- Open Scale in the layout settings and click Set scale from two points: click two points whose real distance you know — a wall, a door — and type that distance in centimetres.
- Select any table, open Advanced and use This table is … cm wide. A standard round table is usually 90 cm.
From then on every size, every measurement and every grid step is shown in centimetres, and new items from the palette arrive at their true size. Setting a scale changes nothing about your tables, only how their sizes are shown.
Zones and sections
A Zone is an area you draw on the floor and give a name to. A Section is the name a table carries. They meet when you save: if a table sits inside a drawn zone whose name differs from the table's section, the builder asks first — Update sections from the drawn zones? — and lists every table it would change, from what to what. Apply zone names & save writes them; Keep sections saves everything else and leaves the sections alone. A table sitting in two overlapping zones is listed as straddling, and the smaller zone wins.
Tables outside every zone keep whatever section you typed, so you can mix the two ways freely.
One table cannot change section: one that still carries a block from a closed section, for any event. Reopen that section on the live floor plan first, then move the table.
Sections are worth naming before your first busy service. Select a group of tables and the panel offers one Section box for the whole selection: type a new name to create a section, or pick one you already use from the suggestions.
Working faster
With more than one item selected, the panel offers:
- Align — six buttons: left, centre, right, top, middle, bottom.
- Spread horizontally / Spread vertically — even gaps between three or more items.
- Renumber — relabels the selected tables in reading order, left to right and top to bottom. You choose the prefix, so "T" gives T1, T2, T3. It refuses to touch a booked table.
- Stage band for all of them at once, under Advanced.
With a single table selected, Duplicate in a row (under Advanced) lays up to 50 copies in a line with an even gap in the direction you choose, numbering the labels as it goes. It is the fastest way to build a row of booths along a wall.
Keyboard
| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
| V | Select tool |
| W | Wall tool |
| M | Measure tool |
| G | Grid on / off |
| Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y | Undo / redo (Ctrl+Shift+Z also redoes) |
| Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V | Copy and paste the selection |
| Ctrl+D | Duplicate the selection in place |
| Ctrl+A | Select every table and item (the room outline itself is left alone) |
| Arrow keys | Nudge the selection; hold Shift to nudge further |
| Delete | Remove the selection |
| Escape | Back to the select tool, clears the selection and shows the layout settings |
| Space (held) | Drag the floor around; the mouse wheel zooms |
Start from a template
- Click Templates in the top bar.
- Pick one of the six layouts: Stage-Front Club, Square Club, Main Room + VIP Mezzanine, Boutique Club, Wide Hall or Concert Hall. Each one shows how many tables it has and how many of those are VIP. They are starting points, not prescriptions — a bistro often gets there fastest from Boutique Club and then renames everything.
- You then see a summary: how many tables will be Added, Replaced, Kept (booked) and Removed, and a box for the name of a new layout.
- Click Apply here (replaces the room) to put the template on the layout you are editing, or Apply to a new layout to leave this room alone and get the template as a fresh layout, which the builder then opens.
A template replaces the whole room, so it never lands on a layout that has tables booked for upcoming events: the summary says This layout has booked tables, lists them, and only offers Apply to a new layout. Point your future events at the new layout in the event form; the booked events keep the room they were booked on. Applying saves straight away — the screen tells you so before you confirm.
Save your work
Save writes your changes. Discard throws them away and puts the layout back as it was. The arrows next to the tool strip are undo and redo.
If you try to leave — or switch to another layout — with unsaved work, you are asked first.
One save can carry up to 500 tables and 300 room items, which is the practical size of a layout.
What is protected
A table somebody is booked on for an upcoming event cannot be deleted or renamed. You can still move it, resize it, rotate it and change its band — the panel says so — but the name and the row stay, because a guest's booking points at them. Free the table on the live floor plan first, then delete or rename it. Bookings from the past do not hold a table: they stay in your history, the table can go. A table you held back yourself is not a booking either — deleting the table drops the hold.
A guest can only ever be seated on a table of the layout their event runs on. If you pick a table from another layout in the reservations list, the screen tells you so and nothing changes.
On a phone or tablet
The builder needs a tablet or a desktop, and a phone gets a short notice saying so with a way back to the live floor plan. On a tablet two fingers pinch and pan the floor and one finger drags an item. Draw the room on a laptop if you can, and keep the phone for service itself — the live map is built for it, and it has its own page: The service floor.
If you cannot see Edit layout
Layout editing can be switched off for a venue. If the Edit layout button is not on your Floor plan screen, that is why — ask Noctessa to turn it back on for you. Everything on the live side keeps working either way.
If something looks wrong
- The map is empty or shows a room you do not recognise. Nothing has been drawn on this layout yet, so a default room is standing in. Open Edit layout and start from a template.
- The event shows the wrong room. The event is pointing at another layout. Open the event and change Floor layout.
- "Cannot delete/relabel a table with an active reservation". Somebody is booked on that table for an upcoming event. Free the table on the live floor plan first, then delete or rename it. Moving, resizing or re-banding a booked table is always allowed.
- "Duplicate table label." Two tables have the same name. Table names have to be unique.
- "Cannot move a table with a closed-section block to another zone". That table is held by a closed section. Reopen the section on the live floor plan, then move it.
- Sizes show as units rather than centimetres. This layout has no scale yet. Click on empty floor, open Scale and use Set scale from two points, or tell the builder how wide one table really is.
- An item will not move. It is locked — select it and click the padlock in the panel.
- A voucher tier is not putting guests near the stage. The event form warns you when a tier's band has no tables tagged to it. Open Edit layout, select the tables you mean and set Stage band under Advanced.
- You cannot see Edit layout. Layout editing is switched off for your venue — see above.
- The builder says to open it on a larger screen. You are on a phone. Use a tablet or a computer to draw; the live floor plan works fine where you are.
Still stuck? Email info@noctessa.com and we will help.