Building a map by hand

The floor map is a simple 2D drawing of your dining room. You place each table where it really sits, trace the shape of the room, and mark the parts guests never sit in — the kitchen, the bar, a pillar. Once a map is saved and set as the active one, it becomes the plan your team works from during service and the plan the booking system uses to decide which tables it can offer to guests.

This page walks you through building a map entirely by hand, from a blank canvas to a finished, active floor plan.

Before you begin

The floor map editor lives on the Floor Maps page. You reach it from your Dashboard: on the live floor map, use the Configure button in the header, or the Create Floor Map button when no map exists yet. The page address is /dashboard/maps.

Available on plans that include the Floor map. Building or changing a map requires the Manage floor maps permission. As the restaurant owner you have every permission by default; an employee needs it granted to their role.

The floor map in plain terms

A floor map is made of three kinds of things you draw on a canvas:

• Tables — the seats you actually book. Each has a number, a size, a shape, and a capacity range that tells the booking system which party sizes it can hold.
• The floor outline — the shape of the room itself. This is the drawn boundary of your dining space. It is optional, but tracing it makes the map look and read like your real room.
• Grey areas — the parts of the plan that are not seating: the kitchen, service stations, walkways, columns. Marking them keeps tables from being placed where they cannot go.

A few ideas worth getting straight before you start:

• Sizes are in the map’s own units, shown as “pixels.” Treat them as the canvas’s own grid rather than centimetres. What matters is that tables look right relative to each other and to the room. A 800 x 600 canvas simply gives you an 800 by 600 area to draw in; pick a width and height that roughly match the proportions of your room.
• You can have more than one map. Keep a separate map for your summer terrace, a private-events layout, or a winter arrangement, and switch which one is live.
• Only one map is active at a time. The active map is the single plan the live floor and your booking availability read from. Building a map does nothing to your bookings until you make it the active one.

Create a new map

1. Open the Floor Maps page.
2. Click Create New Map. The Create New Floor Map dialog opens.
3. Enter a Map Name — something you will recognise later, such as Main Dining Room or Outdoor Patio.
4. Set the Width (pixels) and Height (pixels). New maps start at 800 by 600. You can use anything from 200 up to 2000, and you can change these later.
5. Click Create.

Give the map a name and a canvas size. Both can be changed later.

The new map appears as a card on the Floor Maps page. Click Edit on that card to open it in the editor.

Tip

Rather start from a photo or a blueprint? The Generate from Image button on the same page uses AI to draft a map with tables from an uploaded floor plan, which you can then fine-tune with the same hand tools described here.

Get to know the editor

When you open a map for editing, the screen has four parts:

• The toolbar across the top — every tool and the Save Changes button.
• The canvas in the middle — where you draw and arrange everything.
• The properties panel on the right — the settings for whatever you have selected (a table, a floor shape, or a grey area).
• The zoom controls in the bottom-right corner of the canvas.

The editor: tools on top, canvas in the middle, properties panel on the right, zoom controls bottom-right.

The toolbar is grouped left to right so related tools sit together:

• Table tools — Select, Add Rectangle Table, Add Circle Table, and Pan.
• Floor — Add Floor Rectangle, Add Floor Circle, and Draw Floor Polygon for tracing the room outline.
• Grey Areas — Add Grey Area Rectangle, Add Grey Area Circle, and Draw Grey Area Polygon for blocking off non-usable zones.
• Grid controls — Toggle Grid and Snap to Grid.
• Delete and Merge Selected Shapes.
• Map Settings.
• Undo and Redo.
• Save Changes, on the far right.

Set the room size

You set width and height when you create a map, but you can change them any time.

1. Click the Map Settings (gear) button in the toolbar.
2. Adjust the Map Name, Width (pixels), or Height (pixels).
3. Click Apply.

Map Settings saves the moment you click Apply — it is separate from the Save Changes button that saves your tables and shapes. If the room feels cramped as you add tables, come back here and give yourself a larger canvas.

Add tables

Tables are the heart of the map. To place one:

1. Click Add Rectangle Table or Add Circle Table in the toolbar.
2. Click anywhere on the canvas to drop the table there.
3. Repeat to add as many as you need. Each new table is numbered automatically — T1, T2, T3, and so on — and starts as an active table that seats 1 to 4.

Every table on the canvas shows its number and its capacity range so you can read the room at a glance.

Edit a table’s details

Click a table to select it. The Table Properties panel on the right shows everything about it:

• Table Number — the table’s identifier, for example T1 or A1. Keep these unique so staff and guests can tell tables apart.
• Display Name (optional) — a friendly name shown alongside the number, such as Window Seat or Booth 3.
• Min Capacity and Max Capacity — the smallest and largest party the table can seat. This is what the booking system uses to match a party to a table, so a table set to 2 to 4 will not be offered to a party of six. Setting a sensible minimum also stops a couple being seated at your largest table.
• Shape — switch between Rectangle and Circle.
• Dimensions — for a rectangle, its Width and Height; for a circle, its Radius. This changes how big the table looks on the map.
• Rotation (degrees) — turn the table to match its real orientation. Use the reset button beside the field to snap it back to 0.
• Status — active, inactive, or maintenance. Active tables are in service and available for seating and bookings; use inactive or maintenance to take a table out of rotation temporarily without deleting it.
• Position — the table’s X and Y on the canvas, shown for reference.
• Delete Table — removes the selected table.

Everything about a selected table lives in the Table Properties panel on the right.

Move, rotate and resize tables

• Move — drag a table across the canvas with your mouse or finger. Turn on Snap to Grid first and newly placed tables line up to the grid for tidy rows.
• Rotate — use the Rotation (degrees) field in the properties panel. There is no rotate handle on the canvas; type the angle or nudge it, and use the reset button to return to 0.
• Resize — change the Dimensions (Width and Height, or Radius) in the properties panel.

A table’s colour reflects its Status, so at a glance you can see which tables are active, inactive, or in maintenance.

Draw the floor outline

Until you draw an outline, the editor shows a plain dashed rectangle the size of your canvas — a placeholder for the room. Tracing the real shape makes the plan recognisable and helps you position tables against the actual walls.

The outline can be one shape or several combined. Use the tools in the Floor group:

• Add Floor Rectangle — click the canvas to drop a rectangle.
• Add Floor Circle — click the canvas to drop a circle.
• Draw Floor Polygon — for rooms that are not a simple box.

To draw a polygon outline:

1. Click Draw Floor Polygon. The toolbar shows a Drawing polygon indicator with a running point count.
2. Click the canvas once for each corner of the room to place a vertex.
3. When you have placed at least three points, finish by double-clicking the canvas or clicking Finish. To start over, click Cancel.

Click any floor shape to select it and open the Floor Shape Properties panel, where you can fine-tune it:

• A rectangle exposes its X, Y, Width, and Height.
• A circle exposes Center X, Center Y, and Radius.
• A polygon lists every vertex; select a point and use Add Vertex or Remove Vertex to reshape it (a polygon keeps a minimum of three).

To build an L-shaped or irregular room out of simpler pieces, drop two or more floor shapes, then combine them: hold Shift and click each shape to multi-select, then click Merge Selected Shapes in the toolbar. Use the delete (trash) button to remove a selected floor shape.

Mark grey (non-usable) areas

Grey areas are the parts of the plan where tables must never go — the kitchen, the bar, service stations, walkways, a structural column. They appear as hatched grey zones so the map clearly separates seating from everything else.

The Grey Areas tools work just like the floor tools:

• Add Grey Area Rectangle and Add Grey Area Circle — click the canvas to drop the shape.
• Draw Grey Area Polygon — click to place each corner, then double-click or Finish (minimum three points).

Click a grey area to open the Grey Area Properties panel. Give it a Label so everyone knows what it is — for example Kitchen, Hallway, or Pillar — adjust its size or vertices, and use Delete Grey Area to remove it. You can drag a grey area to reposition it.

Trace the room, mark the kitchen and walkways as grey areas, then arrange tables in the seating space.

Caution

Tables cannot sit on top of a grey area. If any do when you try to save, the save is stopped and you will see Tables overlap with restricted areas, listing the tables to fix. Drag those tables off the grey zone, then save again.

Grid, snap, zoom and pan

These controls help you work precisely:

• Toggle Grid shows or hides the background grid — a visual guide for lining tables up.
• Snap to Grid makes newly placed tables snap onto the grid lines, so rows stay even.
• Zoom — the controls in the bottom-right corner zoom out (down to 25%) and in (up to 400%). Reset Zoom returns to 100% and re-centres the view, and Fit to View scales the whole map to fit your screen.
• Pan — pick the Pan (hand) tool and drag to move around a large map, or simply scroll.

Undo and redo

Made a change you did not mean to? Use the Undo and Redo buttons in the toolbar, or the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl+Z to undo and Ctrl+Shift+Z (or Ctrl+Y) to redo.

Save your work

Nothing you draw is stored until you save it.

1. Click Save Changes on the right of the toolbar. While you have unsaved edits the button stands out and gently pulses; once everything is saved it reads Saved.
2. A confirmation appears — Changes saved — when your floor map has been updated.

One save writes everything at once: your tables, the floor outline, and the grey areas. If you try to leave the editor with unsaved changes, the CRM asks first, offering Save changes or Discard changes so you never lose work by accident.

Remember the overlap check runs at save time, so if a table is sitting on a grey area, move it off before your changes will save.

Make a map the active one

Building a map does not change what your restaurant is running until you activate it. Back on the Floor Maps page, each map card can carry a badge: Active marks the plan currently in use, and AI marks maps drafted from an image.

• To activate a map, click the check button on its card. Only one map is active at a time, so activating one replaces the previous active map. The active map is what the live floor and your booking availability read from.
• To rename a map, hover its card and click the pencil icon next to the name.
• To remove a map, click the trash icon and confirm.

Worked example: a small dining room

Suppose you are setting up a compact room with six tables and an open kitchen along one wall.

1. On the Floor Maps page, click Create New Map, name it Main Dining Room, leave the size at 800 by 600, and click Create. Open it with Edit.
2. Click Draw Floor Polygon and click the four corners of the room, then double-click to finish. You now have the room’s outline.
3. Click Add Grey Area Rectangle and drop a rectangle along the wall where the kitchen sits. Select it and set its Label to Kitchen.
4. Turn on Snap to Grid for tidy placement. Click Add Rectangle Table and drop four two-tops along the window side; each comes in as T1 through T4, seating 1 to 4.
5. Click Add Circle Table and drop two round tables in the centre — T5 and T6. Select T6, set Min Capacity to 4 and Max Capacity to 8, and give it the Display Name Round Table.
6. Check nothing overlaps the kitchen. Drag any table clear of the grey zone.
7. Click Save Changes and wait for Changes saved.
8. Return to Floor Maps with the back arrow, and click the check button on the Main Dining Room card to make it active.

Your room is now drawn, saved, and live — ready for the live floor view and for the booking system to seat guests.

Related

The floor map overviewHow the floor map fits into daily service and the rest of the CRM.

Time slotsYour tables and their capacities decide which parties each bookable time can seat.

Your booking pageSee how the tables you map turn into availability guests can book online.