Get started with your free floor plan

Your free account comes with a workspace, your event and one floor plan. When you confirm your email, the floor plan opens in the editor. This guide takes you from there to a floor plan you can show your team.

The editor's Getting started list, in the bottom-left corner of the map, follows the same steps and ticks each one off as you go. Select the arrow to fold it to a small Getting started button, and select that button to open it again. It goes away once every step is done.

Add your floor plan

The quickest start is the floor plan your venue already gave you. On an empty map, select Upload floor plan image and choose the file. PNG or JPG works best, ideally 4000 x 3000 pixels or larger, up to 50 MB.

No plan from the venue? Select Set map size instead, enter the width and height of the floor, and draw from scratch. If you chose a plan from the Venue Library when you signed up, it is already on your map.

Set the scale

Booth sizes are only right once the map knows how big the image is in real life. Select Calibrate in the footer, click the two ends of a wall or aisle you know the length of, and type that length. See Set the scale.

Place your booths

Select Booth (B) in the tool rail, pick a booth type, and click the map to place one. To fill a whole row or region at once, use Layout (U). Then number them all in order with Booth numbering (N). See Lay out and number booths.

Export an image

Select Export in the editor header to download your map as an image. On the free plan, exports carry a Map D watermark.

Share a view-only link

To show your floor plan to your team, your venue or whoever signs off on the budget, select Share in the editor header (on a phone, it is in the menu), then Make link. Copy the link and send it.

Anyone with the link can look around the floor plan without an account. They see your latest saved changes, with a free plan watermark over the map. They can't change anything, and prices are not shown. The dialog shows how many times the link has been opened.

To stop sharing, open Share again and select Turn off link. Anyone who opens the old link then sees that the floor plan is no longer shared. Making a link again gives it a new address.

Tell us about your event

Select Add beside Tell us about your event in the Getting started list, and enter your event date, roughly how many booths you need, or both. The date also becomes your show's start date. It helps the Map D team send tips while they are still useful, not after your event.

Get a hand

Select Need a hand? at the bottom of the Getting started list to book a call or send a message to the Map D team. You can also reply to any of the emails Map D sends you in your first month: a person on the team reads every reply.