Auto-Fill & layout templates

0:03Placing tables one at a time is fine for a handful. For five hundred seats, it isn't. That's what Auto-Fill is for.

0:10Here's the Grand Ballroom with the fixed pieces already in: a stage, two screens, a dance floor, and a bar on each side. The seating hasn't been touched.

0:20Auto-Fill Setup is the fourth icon down the rail.

0:24Start with the layout. There are eight engines — staggered, aligned, theater, classroom, conference, U-shape, hollow square and trade show. Each lays out the way that setup actually gets set.

0:37Then the table, how many chairs go on it, and how much room you want between rows and columns.

0:43Before committing to anything, ask the room what it will hold.

0:47Sixty-five tables, five hundred and twenty seats. That settles a capacity question before you've drawn a single thing.

0:54Fill the active area.

0:58Sixty-five numbered tables, in one click. And it stays a live block — change the rows, the spacing or the chairs per table on the right, and the whole thing regenerates in place.

1:09But look carefully at what it did. The grid ran straight through the stage, and right across the dance floor. A block is a grid — it doesn't know what's already in the room.

1:20Which is exactly what this checkbox is for. Flow around obstacles.

1:27Fill it again, and now every table is placed individually, routing around everything already there. Nothing on the stage. Nothing on the dance floor. Nothing inside a bar.

1:38The trade-off is written on the label: loose tables, rather than one editable block. Use the block while you're still tuning the numbers. Switch to flow once the room has furniture in it.

1:49Either way, Number the tables gives you a numbered set, the counters at the bottom right tell you what you actually ended up with, and one undo takes the whole fill away.

1:59And if it's a setup you run every week, save the settings as a preset and it's one click next time. Next: numbering, notes and measuring.