This article builds on definitions concepts and tools introduced in the article "Create a Seat Map". It may be helpful to read that article first before proceeding.

The best way to build an accurate representation of your venue is to use a reference chart. If you are renting a venue, most venues will be able to provide a reference chart upon request. If they don’t have one available, request a site visit to the theater to take notes and make drawings of the space.

This is a sample reference chart for a 292 seat venue. Each square represents one seat and the row and seat numbers are labeled as often as is necessary.

You can add a reference chart to the seat map builder when you first start working on a new seat map or at any time by dragging and dropping an image into the Reference chart space on the right side of the seat map editor.

When you add a reference chart to the seat map editor you’ll be prompted to calibrate the chart.

The first step in calibration will be to zoom in on a nice long row on the chart.

Then you will be prompted to place a minimum of 4 seats on the chart and adjust the size of the seats to the desired size. Don’t worry if the seats don’t line up in a perfect row.

In the next step, the size of the seats will be automatically adjusted to better match the chart, you will have the opportunity to confirm or adjust the size recommended during this step.

In the final step, you will be asked to place a second row of seats to help calibrate the row spacing tool.

To test how effective the reference chart calibration worked, use the Multiple rows tool to draw a large block of seats over your reference chart.

In the example below, you’ll notice that the seats in rows A through L align very closely to the reference chart. The rows in this reference chart aren’t perfectly identical, rows L through P are fractionally taller than the rest of the rows on the chart. Don’t be alarmed that there are extra seats in row P.

Similarly, the seat spacing is a little bit off because the column widths on this chart are not uniform. Columns 1, 2, 5 and 6 appear narrower than most columns, whereas column 16 and 20 are a bit wider than most columns. It’s always nice when a chart is perfect, but small variances like this can be overcome by making a minor adjustment to the row and seat spacing of the row tool.

To fit the seats to the chart, there are two options:

The difference between these two different options is minimal, but you may notice that there is a closer relationship between each seat and the reference chart in option 2 and if that makes it easier and clearer to build an accurate seating chart, it’s a small adjustment to make, when you make the adjustment at the very beginning of your build process.

The seats in the following images were built with two different row tools, the image on the left was built using the Row tool and the image on the right was built using the multiple row tool. They look the same, but there are some differences that might not be visible on first inspection.

Both images look to be reasonably well aligned to the reference chart, but the image on the left contains errors that may be difficult to detect.

The errors become clearer when the rows and seats are labeled.

The direction in which a row is drawn will determine which direction in which the seats are initially labeled. This can be corrected using the direction setting in the row labeling tool, and is an easy fix, but it is worth drawing attention to. In the image below on the left, rows B, C, E, G, J, L, O and Q were drawn from left to right, all other rows were drawn from right to left. The numbering on the seats in rows B, C and Q are also incorrect, these rows should end with seat 4, these numbers can also be fixed using the seat labeling tool.

You will also notice a difference in the sequence in the row labels on the image above… the image on the right shows a continuous sequence of rows from B to O with no omissions.

The image on the left, appears to be missing row H and row M. These rows are not missing - while drawing these rows, an accidental double click placed a single seat at the beginning of the row, and another seat was stacked directly on top of it. Look at row I to spot the error. If you look at the label on the right end of row I, the label shows the letter H and the letter I stacked on top of one another - it’s very discrete and easy to miss. To illustrate this more clearly, in the image below, row I has been selected and moved aside to expose the single seat that was created by the accidental double click. A similar error was made while drawing row M and N.

So what’s the lesson to be learned from these two different approaches to building blocks of seats? The takeaway is that whenever possible, use the largest tool that is available to draw a block of seats. Building a large area with a smaller tool by creating and assembling smaller segments creates the opportunity to make mistakes that may be hard to spot.

To create a large block of seats that is not square, first start by drawing a large block of seats using the multiple rows tool. The rows in this block should have as many seats as your longest row and should stretch from the front row to the back row of the reference chart you are trying to emulate. This first step will leave you with a few extra seats that don’t correspond to seats on the reference chart. These extra seats have been indicated in red in the image below. Before proceeding to the next step, it is handy to have the seats labeled.

Using the “Select seats tool” select a seat that you would like to delete. To select more than one seat at a time, hold the shift button and continue to click seats to expand your selection. In the image below, it may look like the entire row has been selected; however, only seats 5, 13, 14, 15 and 16 are selected.

Click Delete to remove the selected seats.

If the seats on your reference chart appear in staggered rows, you can build staggered rows using the multiple row tool.

Select the multiple rows tool. In the row tool settings, change the “Block style” to “Intertwined rows” to start building staggered seating blocks.

Once you’ve drawn one or more rows, you can curve the rows by selecting the rows and adjusting the curve using the row settings on the right side of the seat map editor. By default the curve of a row is set to 0 (no curve). Curves can be either positive or negative.

If your rows get progressively longer in addition to being curved, you can select each row individually and adjust the number of seats, curve and row spacing to shape your rows.

To draw the block of seats in the following image, start by using the multiple row tool to build a block of seats that is 4 rows deep by 15 seats wide. Selecting one row at a time, set the curve of the row and adjust the number of seats

To clean up the row spacing, select all 4 rows of seats and set the row spacing for this block of seats.

The seat map editor can also be used to create ticket allocations for objects other than seats. The area tool can be used to create allocations to represent all sorts of things, like sofas in a lounge, cars in a drive-in or a standing room only general admission area.

Here is an example of a standing room only general admission area that can accommodate 500 patrons.

This type of area doesn’t need to be a rectangle, you can make a custom shape using the Elliptic Area Tool or the Polygonal Area Tool.

The image below shows what the ticket selection process looks like for areas built with the Area Tool.

Sofas are an increasingly popular seating option and they can be represented using the Area Tool. You can use the rectangular area tool or the polygonal area tool to create the shape of your sofa.

In this example, we’ve used the polygonal area tool to create a curved 3 seat sofa.

If we wanted to sell each spot on a 3 seat sofa as a separate ticket, you can set the capacity type to General Admission (like the example above); however, in this example we’re going to try something a little different.

In this example, we are going to make it so that only one customer can purchase each sofa. We’re going to set a requirement that in order to book the sofa, they need to purchase a minimum of 2 seats or a maximum of all 3 seats. To set this requirement, we set the capacity type to Variable Occupancy and set a minimum occupancy of 2 places and a maximum occupancy of 3 places for each sofa.

If you want the customer to be required to book all seats in order to reserve the sofa, you can set both the minimum occupancy and maximum occupancy to 3 places.

The table tool can be used to create round or rectangular tables.

With the round table tool, you can configure how many seats are placed around the table.

With the rectangular table tool, you can control the dimensions of the table and how many seats are placed on each side of the table.

Tables have 3 different occupancy options that you can choose from when labeling the table and the seats. Tables can be booked by:

Categories created with the seat map editor will be connected to your ticket buckets in order to create your ticket allocations.

You can use categories in a number of ways to create ticket allocations for special use cases:

For these examples, we’ll create the following categories:

Let’s start by making all seats General Admission Seats. Use the selection tool to select all seats, then select general admission from the Category dropdown menu. This will make every seat on the chart a general admission seat.

Next, we’ll select seats N17 through N20, we’re going to change the category of these seats to “Not Available for Public Sale”. This category won’t end up being connected to a ticket bucket. By not connecting these seats to a ticket bucket, they will never be sold to a customer or issued internally via the box office. These seats will remain empty and available for the use of venue staff and volunteers. These seats are located in the back of the theatre near a door where staff or volunteers can discreetly slip in or out of the cinema as required.

Next, we’ll place the “Best Seats in the House”. This is the allocation that is being used for the pre-sale. The pre-sale is being offered to Sponsors and Donors only, so the category name was chosen to be something that would suit both of those pre-sale eligible groups and not be upsetting to a member of the general public who is not part of the pre-sale. If this allocation was called Sponsors & Donors, a member of the general public might complain that the best seats are all blocked for sponsors & donors. By calling the allocation something more discreet, a member of the general public might inquire what they need to do to have access to the best seats in the house rather than complain about the treatment of the general public versus sponsors and donors.

Supposing that we know that our sponsors and donors have a preference for the front of the cinema and a few rows back from the centre of cinema, let’s select rows A, B, J and K in the centre block of the theatre and set the category to “Best Seats in the House”.

Next, we’ll place the holds for the guest in attendance and their delegation. We’ve called this allocation Filmmaker Holds. Once again, this label will show on the seat map that the general public will see, so you may choose to call this allocation something else in order to be more discreet about what this allocation is for.

To make sure that the filmmaker has easy access to the aisle so that they can come up to the front of the cinema for a Q&A following the film, their allocation is going to be set on an aisle. Some organizations may choose to put the filmmaker holds in the front row, but to assure a comfortable viewing experience, we’re going to set them further back in the theatre. Assuming that the guest delegation includes the director, a producer, two actors and the director’s parents, we’re going to block off seats I5 through I10.

Finally, we’ll place our ADA and ADA companion seats. Let’s place 4 pairs of these in the cinema… B3 and B4, B17 and 18, P6 and P7, and P11 and P12.

B3, B18, P6 and P12 will be the ADA seats (these may actually be wheelchair spaces in your theatre), B4, B18, P7 and P11 will be the ADA Companion seats.

Here’s the final chart.

Now that the seats are all labeled and categorized, let's build the corresponding ticket buckets.

Best Seats in the House

For the “Best Seats in the House”you might configure something like the following. How you control the pre-sale itself can vary. You might consider locking ticket sales and providing an unlock code to qualifying patrons. Another approach may be to temporarily set the event bucket to pass only and then control which passes have access to the pre-sale by configuring your pass rules to restrict access based on the current time (when the pass is used to place an order).

Once the pre-sale for sponsors and donors has ended, you may choose to keep this ticket bucket as a pass restricted ticket bucket, or you can remove the pass restrictions to allow any remaining ticket to be purchased by the general public.

General Admission

Filmmaker Holds

The filmmaker holds are not public for online customer orders. These tickets can only be issued via the dashboard box office and this ticket bucket can only be seen / accessed in the dashboard box office by administrators and staff that have a “guest services” role in the eventive dashboard. The guest services role was added here because the organization in our example has a staff member who coordinates travel and itineraries for invited guests. In order to lock sales to administrators and selected roles, you must first check ‘exclude quantity from total event capacity’ to make the ‘lock sales to administrators and selected roles’ setting visible, but if you don’t want to exclude this ticket allocation from total event capacity, you don’t need to leave this setting checked.

ADA and ADA Companion Seats

Note that the ADA seat is available for public sale and the ADA Companion Seat is not. The ADA Companion ticket is set up to be Auto-issued as a companion ticket with the ADA seat.

Please note that companion tickets currently aren’t issued with a seat number, they should know where to go based on the seat number that is on the ADA ticket, but may be directed to the correct seat by venue staff.

If the ADA ticket is a wheelchair space that isn’t numbered, you might consider flipping this configuration around so that the ADA ticket is issued when the Companion ticket is purchased, so that at least one of the tickets will correspond to a physical seat that is labeled in the venue, though if you take this approach, you may need to put some clarifying text in the event description to describe what is happening since ADA rules specify that the ADA ticket is the one that should be charged and the companion should be free.

Not Available for Public Order

No ticket bucket was built to correspond to this category since these seats didn’t need to be ticketed for their intended use as staff and volunteer seats.

Categories can also be used to create tiered on-sales - this can be done in a couple of different ways.

This can be done by creating a category that corresponds to each ticket drop and manually by toggling the “Public for online customer orders” setting when you are ready to release a new allocation of tickets.

With pass restricted ticket buckets, this can either be done manually by toggling the “Public for online customer orders” setting when you are ready to release a new allocation of tickets or by using the pass restrictions to determine when a particular pass bucket has access to tickets. For example, you may have a ticket bucket similar to the “Best Seats in the House” ticket bucket in the example above. You may want Sponsors to have access to these seats first and then allow donors to join in on the sale one day later. You can set this timing on the pass bucket using the “Restrict based on the current time (when the pass is used to place the order)” setting on the appropriate pass rule.

This step is very important. Before you put your tickets on sale, check your seat map - once, twice or three times. Check it as many times as necessary to make sure that all sections, seats, areas, tables, etc. are all properly labeled and that there are no duplicate labels, no accidental hidden seats that weren’t caught while building the chart.

It is also wise to issue a test ticket to yourself to check how your seat labels will be displayed on your tickets. Check the appearance of your test ticket as a print at home ticket, ticket stock tickets printed from the box office, and a ticket QR displayed on a mobile device. If your Section, Row or Seat labels are too long, the text may be truncated or cut off - this most often happens with ticket stock tickets printed from the box office, so please be aware of this and check all ticketing methods that you plan to use for your event. If your organization has a custom app, please also check how the section, row and seat labels appear when tickets are displayed in your custom app.

Any mistake in the chart that requires changing after your tickets are put on sale can put your ticket orders at risk of being lost. The orders are connected to the specific label on each seat (or other object). Changing a label will disconnect the order from the ticket and this can’t be reversed or restored by Eventive.

Seat maps can be a great tool to help your customers plan their event experience. Some audience members highly value knowing that their place in the theatre is guaranteed to be there for them, but seat maps do require a higher degree of planning and commitment.

If you plan on using seat maps, don’t rush to put your seats on sale - ensure that your seat map is perfect and your plans are solid before putting seats on sale as troubleshooting after tickets are on sale may or may not be possible depending on the required change.

If you have questions about seat maps and whether they are right for your event, please contact Eventive Support and we’ll be glad to consult with you and review your seat maps while you are planning your event.