Build your floor plan with AI

Send the floor plan your venue gave you, and the AI turns it into an interactive map: walls, doors, halls and numbered booths in their sizes. You review the draft in the map editor and apply it when it looks right. Nothing is published until you choose to publish.

Open Build your floor plan

When Map D sets up your show, your invite opens straight on Build your floor plan once you have chosen your password. If you are invited as an Associate, the invite also gives you access to that show. Later, you can find it two ways:

• Select Floor Plan in your show's menu.
• On your show dashboard, select Build your floor plan under Event links. Once your show has a map, the same button reads Floor plan builds.

You need permission to edit the floor plan to build one. If Map D set up your show and no floor plan has been uploaded after 3 days, you get a reminder email, and another after 7 days.

Start from last year's map

If your show is linked to its previous edition and that show has a floor plan, the page asks How do you want to start? Choose Start from last year's map to build from it instead of uploading a plan. Every hall of last year's show is laid in as it was, with its booth types, prices and floor plan image. Last year's exhibitors and orders are not copied.

Under What changes this year, write only what is different in Changes to make, for example "move the stage to the north wall" or "hold booths 101 and 102 back from sale". Everything you do not mention stays as it was. Then select Build from last year's map. If the venue's layout changed a lot, choose Upload this year's plan instead.

Upload your files

Drop your files on the page, or select choose files. Add everything you have:

• Floor plans: the PDF your venue or decorator sent you works best, as it is. Images (PNG or JPG), Illustrator files saved with PDF content and AutoCAD DXF files work too. A photo or screenshot works if it is sharp and taken straight on.
• A booth list: an Excel or CSV file of booth numbers, sizes and prices.
• Your logo, and marked-up screenshots of changes you want.

You can add up to 20 files, 60 MB each, and a ZIP file is unpacked for you. Each file shows what it will be used for: Floor plan, Booth list, Logo, Changes to make or Don't use. Change it if the guess is wrong.

Tell us about your booths

Under About your booths, a few answers save a round of questions later. Skip anything you are not sure about:

• Units: Feet or Meters.
• Standard booth size: the size most of your booths are, or Mixed, read it from my plan.
• Booth numbers: Keep the numbers on my plan, or Number them for me row by row from the number you enter in Start at. A plan without booth numbers is fine: with Keep the numbers on my plan, the booths are built without numbers and you can number them in the map editor whenever you are ready. A booth needs a number before it can be sold.
• Room names and show title: As labels you can edit puts them on the map as text labels, or Written on the floor plan image makes them part of the picture. See Review and apply your draft.
• Main entrance: which wall, or Read it from my plan.
• Areas to leave out, such as a loading dock or a ballroom you are not using.
• Booths not for sale, by booth number, such as an info desk.
• Anything else we should know, such as sponsor islands or signs to add.

The AI builds from these answers too, after it reads your plan. It can add a stage, seating, tables or a registration desk, hold booths back, number booths the way you describe, and leave out the areas you name. If your plan shows the hall but no booths yet, describe them here: how many, what size and where, for example "30 booths 10 x 10 on the perimeter and a 20 x 40 stage". If your notes mention a spreadsheet or another file, upload it with your plan. What we assumed on your draft says what was changed because of your notes, and anything it could not do.

Then select Build my floor plan.

While it builds

The page shows each step: Reading your files, Drawing walls, doors and booths, Checking the map against your plan and Ready for your review. It usually takes 5 to 15 minutes. You can close the page: you get an email when your draft is ready.

If your booth list and your plan disagree, for example a booth number that is on one and not the other, the draft lists it as something to check instead of guessing.

Answer a few quick questions

If something is unclear, such as which page is the main hall or what size most booths are, the build pauses and asks you under A few quick questions. You also get an email. Pick an answer and select Continue building. If you are not sure, select Skip for now and the AI uses its best reading. You can change anything during review.

If your plan shows the hall but no booths and you did not describe them, the build asks How many booths, what size, and where? Write the layout in your own words and the AI lays the booths out. If you skip it, the hall is built without booths and you can add them in the map editor. If the plan does not show its scale either, it also asks How big is the space?, such as "200 x 120 ft", so the booths fit.

If no booths could be read from your plan but your organization already has a map of the same venue from an earlier show, the build asks Start from your earlier map of this venue? Pick the map to start from, and anything in your notes, such as "move the stage" or "add 4 booths", is made on top of it. Choose None of these, I'll describe the layout to describe the layout instead.

Review and apply your draft

When Your floor plan is ready appears, each hall shows how many booths it has and anything to check. What we assumed lists the guesses the AI made, such as the scale.

Boxes on your plan that are not booths, such as parking spaces, tables, seating or a drawing grid, are left out of your booths. The hall counts this as a thing to check, and the draft in the editor says how many boxes were left out and what they are. If any of them are booths, add them in the map editor.

Booths your plan draws at an angle, such as a diagonal row, are built turned the same way. Booth numbers read off a scan or a picture of your plan, rather than from the file's own text, are checked once more booth by booth, close up.

If your plan has no booth numbers yet, the hall shows Number these booths. Pick an Order (Row by row, back and forth, Left to right, row by row or A hundred per aisle), type the first number in Start from, and select Number booths. The numbers go into the draft before you review it, and What we assumed says how they were numbered. You can also number booths later in the map editor; see Lay out and number booths.

Your booths are sorted into booth types by size. If your plan colours its booths by kind and has a legend, such as a blue square beside "Premium", each kind becomes a booth type with that name and colour. The colour is the type's Assigned colour, and booths no one is assigned to yet show a lighter shade of it. That works even when the plan has no booth numbers or outlines and shows its booths only as coloured boxes beside a legend, as designed sponsor plans often do. Kiosks and pods in the legend are kept as their own smaller kind. Colours you name in Anything else we should know, such as "Budget Booths (Blue)", name booths the same way. If your plan uses colours with no names for them, the types are named by size and colour, such as "10 x 10 Blue": rename them and set their prices in the map editor.

1. Open the draft

   Select Review in the editor. The map editor opens with the floor plan assistant showing Proposed changes.

2. Ask for changes

   Describe anything you want different in plain words, such as "make the booths along the back wall 10x20" or "number Hall A from 100". See The floor plan assistant.

3. Apply it

   Select Apply when it looks right. The booths go into your draft map, and the build shows as Applied.

Visitors see nothing until you publish. See Publish your floor plan.

The draft also gives the map a floor plan image, the picture of your venue under the booths. When your plan is a PDF or DXF drawn on a computer, the venue is redrawn from its own lines in light grey: walls, doors, rooms and columns stay, and the booths, booth numbers, aisle sizes, title block, logos and legend are left off. Boxes inside a title block or a booth inventory table are not built as booths. On top of it:

• Room and area names from your plan are text labels, so you can rename or move them, and attendees can search for them in Find a place.
• Your show's name, venue, city and dates are a title at the top right, taken from your show's details. When the dates change, edit the label.
• The hall's outer walls and its entrances are walls and doors you can edit.
• Each hall and room the plan names is also an Area, drawn without a fill so the picture shows through. Select one to color it.

If you chose Written on the floor plan image under Room names and show title, the room names and the title are part of the picture instead, the way a printed plan shows them. Attendees can't search for them, and changing one means replacing the image. You can also do this later in the map editor with Flatten labels in Map Settings. See Map Settings.

When your plan is a scan or a picture, the image is your plan itself, cropped to the hall, lightened so the booths stand out, with the booths drawn on it taken off so they do not show twice.

To take words off the picture, say so in Anything else we should know, for example "remove the word Refreshment". The picture appears once you apply the draft. To use a different picture, select Import in the editor's header.

If the draft is far from your plan, you do not have to apply it. Select Build another floor plan and upload a clearer file, such as the PDF your venue sent rather than a photo of it. On a phone, it is in the menu next to Review in the editor.

If it could not be built

If a file cannot be read, the page shows Couldn't build and says why. Select Upload a new file to try again, usually with a PDF export. You can also open the map editor at any time and draw the floor plan yourself or describe it to the assistant. See Open the map editor.

To build a plan for another hall or a new version of the floor, select Build another floor plan.