How to use Plotline

Plan your first event

You don’t need an account to start. Your first event is saved in your browser as you go.

1. Open plotlineapp.online.
2. Answer four questions: what kind of event (wedding, corporate, festival or party), how many guests, when, and where. Start typing the venue name or address and pick it from the list.
3. Check Budget in. Plotline picks your local currency, but you can change it.
4. Press Build my plan.

You get a complete first draft:

• a floor plan with tables spaced for service and access;
• a timed run sheet;
• a budget with typical costs for your size;
• a supplier checklist linked to the budget;
• safety forms and a suggested crew roster.

Edit any of it from there. If you’d rather begin with nothing, choose or start blank instead.

Finding your way around

• Tabs. They run down the left on a computer and along the bottom on a phone: Overview, Floor plan, Site map, Guests, Run sheet, Suppliers, Budget, Docs and Crew.
• Top bar. It shows your budget position, how many seats you have, whether your work is saved, Undo/Redo, Search, Feedback, Share and Export pack.
• Search (⌘ K, or Ctrl K on Windows). Jump to any tab, add a guest, table or supplier, find a person, or open the table plan designer. Just start typing.
• Undo anything with ⌘ Z, and redo with ⇧ ⌘ Z. Dragging something counts as one step.
• Your events. Click the event name at the top to see all your events. Click the Plotline logo to go back to the start page.

Building the floor plan

Staging

Stages are built from real 2.44 × 1.22 m (8 × 4 ft) decks: speaker and DJ risers, bridal stages, band stages, presentation stages, main stages and catwalks.

• Resize by whole decks and set the leg height (200–1200 mm).
• The load list counts the decks, legs, stairs and skirting you need, and Plotline warns you when a stage is high enough to usually need handrails.

Rooms

Your room outline is listed under Rooms in the Properties panel, where you can rename it and change its width and depth. Add walls, doors, fire exits, pillars and windows from the library.

The library, your kit & item requests

The library has around 180 items, all at real size:

• tables, trestles and seating;
• staging, AV and lighting;
• bars and catering;
• décor, facilities, barriers, games and vehicles;
• marquees.

Search by name or by what it’s for: “speaker”, “toilet”, “arch” and “heater” all work. Your most recent items appear at the top.

Your kit

Press Your kit at the top of the library. It has two tabs.

• This plan: every line on your load list.
  • Enter how many you Own and the Price each to hire.
  • Plotline then shows what you’re Short and what the floor plan costs.
  • Prices are remembered for every event you plan.
• Your own items: add your real pieces with their size, shape, colour, icon, how many you own and their price. They appear first in the library and work in 3D, the load list and the budget.

Can’t find something? Request it

1. Press Request item, or search and choose Request it when nothing matches.
2. Give it a name, choose a category, and enter its width, depth and height (metres or feet).
3. Add a note and up to three photos. These help us draw it properly.
4. Leave Add a stand-in ticked. A placeholder at the size you gave goes into your kit and onto your plan straight away, so you can keep planning.

Long tables from trestles

Trestles (1.8 m and 2.4 m) join end to end into one long feasting table.

• Drag a trestle near the end of another and it snaps flush. Hold Alt if you don’t want it to snap.
• Or select a trestle and press Add a trestle to the run as many times as you need.
• Properties shows the whole run, for example “Run of 6 · 14.4 m · 48 seats”.
• Chairs drop off the ends where trestles meet, so your seat count stays honest.

Marquees & tents

The library’s Marquees & structures group has frame tents, clearspans, pole tents, sailcloth, stretch tents and tipis in standard sizes. Select a marquee to change:

• Type and span, from the standard widths.
• Length, in whole bays (for example 4 × 4.5 m = 18 m).
• Walls: open, clear or white. With walls on, use Add a doorway to choose the side, width and position of each opening.
• Wall and peak heights, which are used in 3D and the sightline check.

Every leg and pole is drawn. Poles are solid, so a table placed on one gets flagged.

A marquee is selected by clicking its edge or a pole. That means you can still click the tables inside it.

Press Show on the site map to put the same marquee on the satellite map. It stays the same size if you change it later.

The load list counts the tent, the metres of sidewall and the weights.

Fill an area F

Lay out a whole room or marquee in one go.

1. Press F, or the fill button in the toolbar.
2. Drag out an area, or click inside a marquee or room.
3. Choose a layout: Rounds 60″/66″/72″, Trestle runs, Theatre rows or Cocktail / standing.
4. Choose the gap between tables: Comfortable (1.5 m), Standard (1.2 m) or Minimum (0.915 m, the narrowest accessible walkway). Or type your own gap in metres.
5. For round and cocktail tables, choose how the rows line up:
   • Grid: straight rows and columns.
   • Alternate: every other row shifted half a table, which usually fits the most.
   • Diamond 45°: the grid turned on the diagonal.
   • Best fit: tries all three and keeps whichever fits the most tables.
6. For trestle runs, choose Straight runs along the room or Angled 45° across it. Angled runs look less formal and can face a stage in a corner. In a plain rectangle, straight runs usually fit a few more.
7. Check the preview and the count (for example “12 tables · 120 seats”), then press Place them.

Fill keeps walkways, fire exits, poles and a gap in front of stages and dance floors clear. You can set that gap with Stage gap.

Re-space tables you’ve already placed

1. Box-select the tables. Anything else caught in the box, like a bar or gift table, stays where it is.
2. Under Arrange in Properties, pick Grid, Alternate or Diamond 45°.
3. Drag the Gap slider. The tables move as you slide, keeping their middle and table numbers in order.

Gaps under 0.915 m turn amber and show as spacing warnings. One ⌘ Z undoes the whole change.

Trestle runs: select them and use Runs: Straight or Angled 45°. Each run turns about its own middle and stays joined. If turned runs end up touching, nudge them apart, or press the other button to turn them back.

Spacing, exits & capacity

Plotline checks your plan as you work. Problems show as a red count in the floor plan toolbar and in the Properties panel, and are listed on Overview.

• Spacing: tables closer than an accessible walkway (0.915 m / 36 in), anything overlapping, and anything standing on a tent pole.
• Fire exits: anything blocking the clear zone in front of an exit.
• Capacity guide: for each room and marquee, its area, the people seated, and a rough capacity for banquet, theatre, classroom and cocktail layouts.
• Exits for the people seated: how many exits you need for the crowd, and whether the total exit width covers it (5 mm per person). Doorways in marquee walls count, and open-sided marquees count as clear.
• Sightlines: seats whose view of the stage, screen or DJ is blocked. See the 3D section below.

3D, walk-through & view from a seat

On the floor plan, press 3D in the top-right toolbar.

• Orbit: drag to turn, scroll or pinch to zoom, right-drag to pan.
• Walk: drag to look around, and move with WASD or the arrow keys. Hold ⇧ to move faster. On a phone, use the on-screen arrows.
• Light: Day, Golden hour (low, warm light with long shadows) or Night. At night, house lights, stage lighting, uplights, festoons and marquees glow.
• Roofs and walls: Solid, Ghost (see-through) or Hidden.
• PNG saves the current view as a picture for your client.
• 2D plan takes you back.

See the view from any seat

Press the eye icon next to a seated guest, either in the Seating panel or in a table’s seat list. Plotline puts you in that chair at seated eye height, looking at the stage, screen, DJ, dance floor or head table, whichever is the main focus.

Sightline check

Plotline looks along every seat’s line of sight. Seats blocked by a pillar, tent pole, wall, speaker, screen or tall décor are:

• outlined in amber on the plan;
• listed under Sightlines by table, with a View link to see the problem for yourself.

Venue drawings

Plan on top of the venue’s own floor plan.

1. On the floor plan, press Import venue drawing (the upload button).
2. Drop in a DXF or DWG CAD file, a PDF, or a photo of the plan.
3. Set the scale:
   • DXF files read their units automatically.
   • PDFs can use their printed scale (1:100 and so on).
   • For anything else, draw along one wall whose real length you know.
4. Under Venue drawing in the Properties panel, press Move to line it up with your room, and use the slider to fade it back.

Venues can publish their plan to the venue library, so organisers can find it and plan on it.

Site map

For outdoor and multi-area events, the site map uses real satellite imagery of your venue.

• Drag stages, marquees, bars, food trucks, toilets, generators, first aid, entrances and more onto the map. Each is shown at its true size.
• Draw zones to get their area and perimeter, and measure distances.
• Marquees linked from the floor plan appear here automatically.

Guests & seating

Add your guests

• Paste a list: one person per line, optionally with their group and dietary needs after commas.
• Import a CSV from a spreadsheet. Plotline works out which column is which.
• Or press Add guest.

Track each guest’s RSVP, group, dietary needs, email, phone and notes.

Seat them

• Auto-seat by group fills tables and keeps groups and plus-ones together.
• On the floor plan, open the Seating panel (the people button) and drag guests onto chairs. Dropping a guest onto an occupied chair swaps the two.
• On a phone: tap a guest, then tap the table.
• Seated chairs show the guest’s initials. Select a table to see who’s sitting where.

Table plans & place cards

Open Table plan from the Guests tab, the Seating panel, Export pack or ⌘ K. You get a live preview of the actual PDF.

Layouts

• Find your seat: guests A–Z with their table, for the entrance board.
• By table: each table with its guests.
• Table cards: one or two per page, for the centrepieces.
• Caterer sheet: every guest by table, with dietary needs highlighted and a summary.

Style and paper

• Pick a style (Classic, Romantic, Modern, Minimal, Art deco, Garden), or choose the heading font, names font and colour yourself.
• Paper goes from A4 and Letter up to A1 and 24 × 36″ posters. On a single sheet, the names resize to fit.

Place cards (tent cards to fold) are in Export pack.

Run sheet

• The day is split into set-up, the event, and pack-down. Overnight builds are fine.
• Supplier arrival and departure times, and crew shifts on the day, appear automatically.
• Running late? The up and down arrows on a row move it and everything after it 15 minutes earlier or later, in one go.
• Crew and supplier work on other days appears under Before & after the event.

Suppliers

• Suppliers are grouped by category, with contact details, quote, amount paid, due date and arrival times.
• Each supplier is linked to its budget line, so quotes and payments flow into the budget.
• Compare shows the quotes in a category side by side against what you budgeted. Choosing one books it and declines the others.

Budget & currency

• The budget shows your target, forecast, committed, paid and still due, plus a breakdown by category. The top bar shows whether you’re over or under.
• Linked lines update themselves: booked supplier quotes, crew hours × rates, and the Floor-plan kit line.
• Once your kit prices cover items on the plan, Plotline offers to add that floor-plan kit line for you.
• Currency: choose any of 28 currencies with the Currency picker on the Budget tab. When you switch, you can convert all your amounts at an approximate rate, or keep the numbers if you’ve already entered them in the new currency.

Docs & forms

• Build forms from scratch, or start from a template: risk assessment, site safety check, crew sign-in, delivery note, pre-event checklist, post-event report or client sign-off.
• Forms can take photos and on-screen signatures.
• On Pro, share a crew link or QR code. Crew fill the form on their phone, with no login.
• Download responses as CSV or PDF, or print a blank form.

Crew roster

• Plan who does what and when, from days before the event (mowing the lawn, the marquee build) to after it (pack-down, cleaners).
• Suggest shifts fills in a typical roster for your type of event. Add shift creates your own, with a section, task, day, times and location.
• A shift is covered either by your team (tick people; it shows “2 of 4 filled”) or by a supplier’s team.
• Unfilled positions and anyone double-booked are flagged.
• Your team’s hours × rates go into the budget. Roster PDF prints every day.

Exporting & sharing

• Export pack: one PDF with your choice of cover, floor plan (sharp at any zoom), site map, seating chart, place cards, guest list, run sheet, suppliers, crew roster, budget and load list.
• Backup file: in Export pack. It saves your whole event to a file you can keep.
• Share (Pro): a live link for clients and crew. Visitors see the plan read-only and can save their own copy to edit.
• Also: the floor plan PDF button on the floor plan, table plans (see above), and PNG pictures from 3D.

Free & Pro

• The price is the same wherever you are, billed in US dollars, with no per-user fees.
• Upgrade from the account menu at top right.
• Signing in: enter your email and press the link we send you. There’s no password. If the email doesn’t arrive, check your junk folder.
• When you sign in on Pro, events you made on the free plan are uploaded to your account.

Keyboard shortcuts

On Windows, use Ctrl wherever you see ⌘.

Questions

Where is my event saved?

On the free plan, it’s saved in this browser on this device, automatically, as you work. Clearing your browser’s site data deletes it, so download a Backup file from Export pack now and then. On Pro, it’s also saved to your account and syncs between devices.

What do you collect about how I use Plotline?

Only anonymous counts of which features get used, for example that someone created a wedding, opened 3D or downloaded a table plan. This helps us decide what to improve.

• We never see what’s in your event: no names, guests, venues or numbers.
• The counts aren’t linked to your account.
• If your browser has Do Not Track turned on, nothing is counted.

Everything else we collect, and why, is in our privacy policy.

Can I use it on my phone?

Yes, every part works on a phone. The library and panels open as sheets from the bottom. Pinch to zoom, and tap a guest then a table to seat them.

Can my client or crew see the plan?

On Pro, press Share to get a live link. They see the latest version without needing an account. Crew can fill in your forms from a link or QR code.

Something’s missing or not working

Press Feedback in the top bar to tell us. We read everything. For a missing library item, use Request item so you can send photos and its size.

How do I contact you?

Email hello@plotlineapp.online. It helps to tell us which event and which screen you were on.

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