Guide & Knowledge Base — Draeft Events

Draeft is a browser‑based tool for drawing 2D floor plans for events. Tents are its specialty, but you can just as easily plan an indoor room, build on top of an existing blueprint, or lay out an outdoor space over a satellite image. This guide explains everything the app can do.

What Draeft is (and who it's for)

Draeft lets you lay out an event space: choose your tents, drop in tables, chairs, a dance floor, a stage, heaters, power, exits and more, then export a clean diagram to share with your client, venue, or crew. It runs in your web browser — nothing to install. It's built for tent‑rental companies, event and wedding planners, caterers, venues, and end users.

More than tents. Tents are Draeft's specialty, but you're not limited to them. You can draw a room or building with the Shape tool, import an existing blueprint or floor plan as a background and build right on top of it, or drop in a satellite/aerial image to plan an outdoor event on the real site. If you can measure it, you can plan it in Draeft — indoors or out, tented or not.

You work on a canvas (the drawing area). Everything is measured to real‑world scale (feet and inches by default), so what you draw reflects what will actually fit on the ground.

A quick word on accuracy: Draeft diagrams are artistic representations that follow common industry standards. Tent brands and models vary slightly (including how they're measured — inside vs. outside the poles), so always confirm final dimensions with your vendor.

Good to know

It's free to build and download. Create your plan and export a JPG at no cost. Pro adds PDF, page sizes, and branding options.
Your work saves itself. Draeft autosaves in your browser as you go, and you can Save to a file to keep or share it. (Clearing your browser data clears the autosave, so save important plans to a file.)
You can't break anything. Made a mistake? Ctrl/Cmd + Z undoes it.
Use a computer. Draeft needs a mouse or trackpad — drawing tents, dragging tables, and precise measuring don't work by touch, so phones and tablets (including iPads) aren't supported yet. If you open Draeft on a touch-only device, it shows a note suggesting you switch to a computer; you can continue anyway, but the canvas won't respond to touch. Sample plans and the finished example plans on draeftevents.com open read-only on those devices, so you can still pan, zoom and flip between saved views. Sending clients and crews a live plan like that is part of Pro.

Quick start — your first plan in 5 steps

Add a tent. Not sure what size? Open the Tent Wizard (top of the screen) for a recommendation. Already know your size? Use the left panel's Builder tab, pick it from the Library, and click Add to Canvas.
Add tables & chairs. Switch the left panel to the Equipment tab and click items to add them to the middle of your view, drag them onto the canvas — or use Zones to auto‑fill an area with seating.
Arrange. Drag items to position them; use the corner handles to rotate or resize where allowed. Select several items (or a group) and a dashed box appears around them with a round rotate handle on top — drag it to turn them all together, holding Shift to turn in 15° steps.
Add the essentials. Drop in a dance floor, exits, heaters, or power as needed.
Export. Click Export to download a JPG (or a PDF with more options on Pro) to email or print for your rental company, caterer, planner, or venue.

Not using a tent? Skip step 1 — draw the space itself with the Shape tool, or add a background image (a blueprint or a satellite view) and lay everything out on top of that instead.

Your work saves automatically in your browser, and you can Save to a file to keep or share it.

Not sure what size tent you need? Start with the Tent Wizard

If you're planning your own event and don't already know your tent size, this is the easiest place to start. The Tent Wizard button sits just left of the plan name at the top. Tell it about your event and it recommends real tents you can add with one click.

How it works

Enter your guest count.
Check how the space will be used — seating & service style (dinner rounds, cocktail, theater, farm tables…), dance/music (dance floor, DJ, band stage), and food & drink (buffet lines, beverage stations). Each adds square footage.
Add any extra space (photo booth, entry, buffer).
The Wizard shows a subtotal and a recommended tent‑size range (a little under to a little over, to fit standard sizes).

Picking tents. Choose your preferred tent type(s) — Frame, Pole, Sailcloth — and a maximum length‑to‑width ratio (how long‑and‑narrow you'll allow; default 2.5). The Wizard lists standard tents that fit your range and ratio, best‑fit first. Click Add on any to drop it on the canvas.

Dance floor helper. If you included a dance floor, the Wizard also suggests tidy 4′×4′ panel layouts for it — each with its own Add button to place a dance floor of that size.

Advanced mode reveals the square‑feet‑per‑person rates and the range percentages so you can fine‑tune the estimate.

Common questions

Where does the recommendation come from? Your guest count and how the space is used, using common per‑person space standards.
It suggested a tent bigger than my subtotal — why? The range adds a little headroom so real, standard tent sizes actually fit.
Can I still tweak the tent afterward? Yes — added tents can be edited in the Builder like any other.

The Tent Builder

The Builder tab (left panel) is where you create tents. Most people never need the technical parts of this section — just pick a ready‑made size from the Library (or let the Tent Wizard choose one). The Custom options are there when you want them.

Library — the easy way. Pick a common, ready‑made size from the list and click Add to Canvas. The tent lands in the middle of the part of the plan you're looking at, so pan or zoom to where you want it first. (Equipment and the Tent Wizard's dance floors land the same way.) If a tent is already there, the new one sits slightly offset so you can see both. That's all most plans need. To change a placed tent later, click it on the canvas to select it, then click the edit (pencil) button in the toolbar that appears — the Builder opens with that tent's settings.

Tent types

Frame tents (also called clearspan, marquee, or structure — all the same for this tool) — free‑standing, no interior poles, so the whole floor is usable. Most flexible.
Pole tents — center and perimeter poles create the classic peaked look; the section size is set by the width.
Sailcloth tents — a variant of pole tents with elegant translucent fabric and rounded or shaped ends.

Common questions

What's the difference between frame, pole, and sailcloth? Frame tents have no interior poles (fully open floor); pole tents have poles and the peaked look; sailcloth tents are the upscale, translucent style of pole tents with rounded ends (usually using wooden poles).
Do I need to use Custom mode? No — the Library covers most events, and the Tent Wizard can pick a size for you.

Naming and describing a tent

Select a tent on the canvas and the right panel's Edit tab shows that tent's settings. At the top:

Name — the label drawn in the middle of the tent, and the heading of that tent's block in the legend ("Ceremony — 20′ × 40′ Frame"). Leave it blank and the tent uses its own name from the Builder. Each placed tent has its own name, so two of the same size can read "Ceremony" and "Dinner".
Description — a few lines about this tent on this plan: what it's for, how many guests, when it lands ("120 guests, chairs in rows. Deliver Friday 2 pm."). Up to 500 characters. It's drawn in smaller text beneath the name, centered with it and wrapped to about half the tent's width, and listed beneath that tent's heading in the legend. Two plan‑wide switches say where descriptions show, so a view can carry a note on the crew's printout but not the client's: - Canvas → Labels → Tent descriptions — on the plan. It sits under the Tent names switch and needs it: hiding tent names hides descriptions too. - Select the legend → Tent descriptions — in the legend, with the other section switches.

Both are on by default and both are captured by a saved view. The name and description always stay inside the tent: zoom far out and they shrink to fit rather than spilling over the walls. On the plan they sit on a lightly see-through backing, drawn over the seating and tables inside the tent, so they stay readable over rows of chairs.

Moving a tent with everything in it

Select a tent and the toolbar shows a Select tent contents button (▣). It selects the tent plus everything inside it, so you can drag the whole setup to a new spot, rotate it, or group it in one go. The reach extends 12 in past the tent's edge, which is what picks up the tent's own wall sections and exits — they're 12 in bands centered on the edge line, so a footprint‑only test would leave the tent's skin behind. It's a small margin on purpose: furniture a couple of feet outside the tent is not swept in.

Custom sizes (advanced)

Want to build an exact size yourself? Switch the Builder to Custom, set the width, then describe the tent with a short construction string. You can skip all of this if the Library or the Tent Wizard already gave you what you need.

Construction string — describes the tent section by section along its length: E = an end, M = a middle section, and E2/M2/M3 for alternate part sizes. Example: E M M E is end‑mid‑mid‑end (spaces are optional). As you type, the Builder shows the live overall size, section count, leg count, and area at the bottom.
Part specs (Frame) — set each section's length, side leg spacing, and (for ends) end‑wall spacing. Each part is color‑coded to match its section on the canvas. A fresh Custom frame starts on the common sizes — End 1 15 ft, End 2 10 ft, Mid 1 15 ft, Mid 2 10 ft, Mid 3 20 ft, each with side leg spacing to match — so you only change the parts your inventory does differently. Picking a Library size and coming back to Custom doesn't lose a frame you've already built: your own sections and construction string return.
Part specs (Pole/Sailcloth) — there's nothing to edit: every dimension follows the width you pick. What does vary is the mid length each token gives you, and the hint under the width spells it out — a 40 ft pole tent reads Mids: M1/M3 20 ft · M2 10 ft, so E M M2 M E drops a 10 ft section into a run of 20 ft ones. - Pole — 20 ft and 60 ft are one mid length throughout (10 ft and 20 ft). 30 ft and 40 ft add a 10 ft M2 alongside their 15 ft and 20 ft mids; that short section carries side poles at its ends only. - Sailcloth — 32, 45, 51 and 57 ft give M1 20 ft, M2 10 ft, M3 30 ft. 59 ft gives M1 20 ft with M2 and M3 both 30 ft. 20 ft is 10 ft throughout and 66 ft is 30 ft throughout, so any M does.
Imperial or Metric. A Units toggle at the top of the Frame > Custom section switches the width and part‑spec fields between feet and centimeters. Flip it and the fields load that unit's defaults (metric defaults: End1 500, End2 250, Mid1 500, Mid2 250, Mid3 300 cm; width 1000 cm). The overall‑size totals stay in feet.

Equipment

The Equipment tab (left panel) holds everything that goes inside or around the tent. Click an item to add it; drag to place it.

Tables — round (30″–72″ plus custom), rectangular (6 ft, 8 ft and more, various widths, plus custom), square (30″, 36″, 48″), and the curved shapes: serpentine and oval (see below).

Table sizes are named the same way everywhere in Draeft — the equipment list, the label on the canvas, the edit panel and the legend all agree. A round table is its diameter in inches (60″). Every other table is its width in inches, then its length in feet (30″ × 6′) — width in inches because that's how tops are ordered, length in feet because that's how the sizes are named. A length that isn't a whole number of feet stays in inches (30″ × 78″). A serpentine is the exception: it reads as its sweep and surface width (90° · 24″), the numbers you'd actually order it by.

Chairs — single chairs, with configurable size.
Sofas — lounge sofas with 4″ arms and a 4″ back; set the depth and length (see below).
Exits — marked exits that snap to a tent edge.
Wall Section — a free‑standing wall piece. Placed on or near a tent it counts toward that tent's wall totals (it doesn't snap to the edge — rotate it to line it up). Set its length and type (clear / solid / no wall).
Wall Types — a key you can place that shows what the wall symbols mean.
Heaters — forced‑air heaters. Set the duct and propane‑hose lengths (they resize the footprint) and label both on the canvas.
Safety — fire extinguisher, no‑smoking sign.
Power — power drop, distro box, power source, generator trailer.
Vehicles/logistics — box truck.
Stage and Dance Floor — adjustable modular platforms (see below).
Simple Shape — a plain rectangle, circle, oval, triangle or polygon you name yourself, for anything the list doesn't cover (see below).
Markers/icons — labeled markers for anything else.

Select any placed item to open its edit panel (size, label, and item‑specific options).

How many people fit at a table? A rough starting point (draw a Zone and Draeft can auto‑fill tables and chairs and count the seats for you):

48″ round — seats 6
60″ round — seats 8 (up to 10 if snug)
72″ round — seats 10 (up to 12)
6 ft rectangle — seats 6–8
8 ft rectangle — seats 8–10

Choosing where the chairs go. Turn Chairs on for a selected table and you control how they're arranged:

Seats — how many. Leave it blank to let Draeft pick a sensible number.
Chairs on one side only — seats a single long side instead of both. Use it for a table set against a wall, a buffet served from one side, or a head table where nobody sits with their back to the room. Rotate the table to choose which way the chairs face.
Chair at one end (head) / Chairs at both ends — adds a seat at the short ends, on top of the side seats.

These work on rectangular and oval tables. Round tables simply ring their chairs, and a serpentine has its own inner/outer edge counts.

Building a seating chart? Select a table to name it (e.g. "Head Table" or "Table 12") and give it a color, and turn on Canvas → Chair numbers to number the seats 1..N around every table (so you can say "Head Table, seat 5"). Together these turn a layout into a planner‑ready seating chart.

Coloring items. Select a table and the toolbar above it shows a color swatch. Pick a color and the table and its chairs change. The swatch works on several items at once too: select them (hold Ctrl or Shift and drag a box around them, or select a zone's contents) and every selected item that takes a color changes together. That's tables, chairs, sofas, simple shapes, stages, dance floors, text and paths. Everything else in the selection (tents, heaters, exits and so on) is left alone, and florals keep their own blossom colors. The swatch shows the color they share, or a color wheel when they differ. The ⟳🎨 button next to it puts them back to the theme's colors. Custom colors show while Canvas → Item colors is on.

Serpentine (curved) tables

A serpentine table is a curved table — the piece you use to build rounded buffet lines, curved bars, and sweeping head tables. Find it under Round & curved tables in the Equipment tab.

A new one is a quarter circle: a 90° sweep, a 30″ inner radius, and a 24″ table width. Select it and the edit panel lets you change all three:

Inner radius — how tight the curve is, measured to the inside edge.
Table width — how deep the table surface is. The outer radius is simply the inner radius plus this width (30″ + 24″ = 54″ by default).
Sweep angle — how far the table curves, in degrees.

Because they're built from an angle, serpentine tables fit together predictably: four 90° pieces close a full circle, and two 180° pieces make an S‑curve. Rotate them like any other item to aim the curve where you want it.

Chairs seat on both curved edges, set separately: chairs on the outer edge face in toward the table, and chairs on the inner edge face back out. Leave the inner count empty for a one‑sided buffet or bar. Both counts are included in the legend's chair total.

Aisle padding works on a serpentine like any other table: the crosshatched band (with Canvas → Padding band on) follows the curve, standing off the chairs on each edge and wrapping round both ends.

A serpentine's on‑canvas size reads as its sweep and width (e.g. 90° · 24″) rather than a width × length, since those are the numbers you'd order by.

Oval tables

An oval table is a rectangular table with a curved end bowed out on each end — the shape you'd use for a softer head table or a rounded buffet. It's in the same Round & curved tables group.

A new one is 30″ × 8 ft overall with a 12″ bow. Select it to change:

Width and Length — the overall footprint, exactly like a rectangular table. Length is measured from the tip of one curved end to the other.
End peak — how far each end bows out past the straight section. The panel shows the straight run that leaves you (a 96″ oval with a 12″ peak has a 72″ straight section).

Turn the peak down for a table that's almost rectangular with softened ends, or up for a longer, more pointed end. The bow never makes the table any wider, whatever you set — a 30″-wide oval stays exactly 30″ across at every peak — so the only limit is the table's own length. A few reference points on a 30″ × 8′ oval:

12″ — the default: gently bowed ends.
15″ (half the width) — the classic racetrack: each end is a half circle.
48″ (half the length) — the straight section disappears entirely and the table becomes one continuous ellipse.

Chairs spread evenly around each side of the table, following the bowed ends rather than stopping where the straight section does — so a heavily bowed oval still seats people around its curve. Seats are shared out by how much table edge there is, so a barely‑bowed table reads as two straight rows while a full ellipse seats people all the way round. The outermost seat is held back from the tip so it doesn't sit astride the end — that comfortably covers up to about five seats a side; past that the end chairs start to overhang the bow, so add an end chair instead of crowding the sides. You can add a chair at one or both ends, sitting right at the tip of each bow.

Sofas

A sofa is lounge furniture for a seating vignette. Find it under General Equipment, alongside chairs.

Every sofa has 4″ arms at each end and a 4″ back down one long side — those are fixed. What you set is the footprint:

Depth — front to back.
Length — end to end.

A new sofa is 36″ deep × 84″ long (a typical three-seater). The panel shows the seat you're left with once the arms and back are taken out — a 36 × 84 sofa seats 32″ × 76″ — and the sofa draws its cushions to match, roughly one per two feet of seat. Shrink it to 34 × 54 for a loveseat, or stretch it out for a long sectional run.

Draeft won't let you shrink a sofa so far that the frame swallows the seat, so the smallest is 12″ deep and 20″ long. Give it a custom label and a color like any other item, and rotate it to face wherever the vignette needs.

Barricades

A barricade is a crowd‑control barrier — the panel on two feet you line up to hold a queue, fence off a bar, or keep guests off a dance floor edge. Find it under General Equipment, alongside chairs and sofas.

Seen from above it's a long panel with a foot at each end, sitting across the panel so the barrier stands up. Two things are yours to set:

Length — the panel run, end to end. A new one is 6 ft, the common size; type any length from 1 ft to 20 ft.
Feet, each side — how far each foot reaches either side of the panel. The default is 12″, so a barricade takes up 2 ft of depth in total.

Rotate it to line a run of them up, and drop as many as you need — the legend counts them for the pull list.

Simple shapes

A simple shape is the blank in the equipment list: a plain outline for anything Draeft doesn't have a symbol for — a bar, a planter, a photo booth, a DJ table, a coat check. Find it under General Equipment, alongside chairs, sofas and barricades. A new one is an 8 ft square; select it to make it what you need:

Shape — Rectangle, Circle, Oval, Triangle or Polygon. Switch any time; the same placed item just redraws. A circle has one size (its diameter), so choosing Circle squares the shape on its width. A triangle fills its width and length with the point at the top and the flat side at the bottom — rotate it to point it wherever you need (a stage wedge, a corner cut‑off, a directional marker).
Sides — shown for a Polygon: how many sides it has, from 3 to 24. It starts as an octagon (8); type 6 for a hexagon, 5 for a pentagon, and so on — the panel names the shape for you. Choosing Polygon, or changing the number of sides, makes the shape even on its width (an octagon comes out square); after that you can set its width and length freely to stretch it. A polygon with an even number of sides sits with a flat edge on top; an odd one points up. Rotate it to turn it.- Size — type the width and length (or the diameter of a circle) in feet and inches, from 6″ up. Or drag the handles on the canvas, exactly as you resize a dance floor — a circle offers its corner handles only, so it scales evenly and stays round.
Name — shows on the shape above its size ("Bar", "10′ × 4′"). Leave it blank and the shape shows only its size.
Show size — untick it to drop the size from the shape, so it reads as just its name. With no name and the size off, the shape draws with no text at all.
Color — pick a fill of your own from the color swatch in the toolbar above the selected shape; ⟳🎨 returns it to the neutral gray.
Solid fill — backs the shape so a background image doesn't show through it, like the canvas‑wide Tent fill but for this shape only. The backing follows the outline, so a circle, triangle or polygon keeps its shape.
Aisle padding — the clear space to keep around it, in inches. It draws as a crosshatched band around the shape when Canvas → Padding band is on (setting a padding turns that on for you), so you can see at a glance that a bar has room for its queue.
Layer: Furniture / Site — which Show on drawing switch hides the shape. Shapes start on Furniture, under Furniture → Simple shapes. Set a shape that marks part of the site, like a dumpster pad or an unloading zone, to Site, and it moves to Site → Simple shapes. That way a view can show the dumpsters and hide the lounge rugs, or the other way round. (Florals aren't affected; they always answer to Florals & plants.)

Rotate, group, lock and copy a simple shape like any other item. It stays a drawing aid: the legend doesn't count simple shapes, so an outline standing in for a vendor's booth never turns up on your pull list.

Florals — beds, centerpieces, garlands and ivy

Show where the florals go: a bed of flowers by the bar, a centerpiece on a head table, a hedge along an entrance, a garland on a rail, or ivy along a fence. Find them under Decor at the bottom of the Equipment tab.

Floral shape — drag it onto the canvas or click +. It starts as a 4′ × 2′ bed of greenery. In its panel, pick the Shape (rectangle, circle, oval, triangle or polygon) and size it like a simple shape. A small circle makes a centerpiece; a long thin rectangle makes a hedge.
Floral path — click Draw, then click points on the canvas and double‑click (or press Enter) to finish, exactly like the Path tool; Esc steps back a point. It draws as a garland or ivy run along the line.

Select a floral to set its Style:

Greenery — leaves only: ivy, foliage, a hedge.
Flowers — blossoms packed close, with a little green showing.
Mixed — greenery with blossoms set into it.

For Flowers and Mixed, pick a Blossom color — blush, white, ivory, peach, red, burgundy, lavender or yellow. Tick Second flower to mix in a second, rose‑style bloom with its own color — blush roses among white blossoms, say — and use Mix to set how many of the blossoms are the second flower (10%–90%). Moving the slider swaps flowers in place; nothing shuffles around. A floral path also has Fullness: how wide the run is. Up to 18″ it's a single garland — leaves along a vine; wider, it fills its whole width as densely as a bed. Like any path, it can show its length and a label ("26 ft ivy").

The leaves and blossoms are drawn to scale — a bigger bed gets more of them, not bigger ones — and the pattern stays put when you move or rotate the floral. Florals, trees and potted plants are drawn on top of tables, so a centerpiece or a garland along a head table always shows; paths are drawn above tables too. Move, rotate, group, lock, copy and save florals in setups like any other item. They're a drawing aid: the legend doesn't count them.

Trees & potted plants

Also under Decor: Tree (a 10′ canopy) and Potted plant (30″). Drag one in or click +. Each is drawn from above and to scale — a tree as a leafy canopy, a potted plant as its pot with fronds spreading over it — so a 20′ oak and a 4′ olive tree read as the size they are.

Select one to set its Spread (the diameter, or drag the corner handles), switch its Type between Tree and Potted plant, give it a name ("Olive tree") and add aisle padding around it. Trees and plants are always round, and like florals the legend doesn't count them.

Two canvas options control florals and plants together (see Canvas options & view): Florals & plants under Show on drawing hides or shows them all, and Floral texture under Fills & color swaps the leaves, blossoms and canopies for plain green outlines — lighter for a permit drawing.

Zones & automatic seating

Zones let you outline an area and have Draeft fill it with seating for you.

Draw a zone, and Draeft can auto‑pack it with tables and chairs for a quick start that you can then refine.
Switch a zone to theater mode for rows of chairs, and it reports the seat count.
Zones track capacity and how many seats/tables are placed.
You can change a zone's label and fill style, and re‑pack it any time.
Duplicate a zone (the copy button, or Ctrl/Cmd + D) to get a second one with the same settings, whether it's tables, theater rows or a parking lot. A table zone's copy comes with its own tables, and re‑packing either zone leaves the other's tables alone.
Padding is the aisle space kept between tables — Draeft no longer also reserves it around the zone edge, so a zone drawn to the usable area fills more fully.
Packing stays inside a tent: draw a zone inside a tent and the tables keep clear of the walls, the rounded ends of a sailcloth tent, and the center poles — nothing lands where it couldn't go on‑site.

Use it when you want a quick, tidy seating layout without placing every table by hand.

Parking lots

A zone can also be a parking lot. Draw a zone over the area, select it, and choose Parking at the top of its settings (next to Tables and Theater). Draeft stripes it with parking spaces and shows the count, for example "118 spaces".

Rows — Double puts two rows of stalls back to back on each drive aisle, the way most lots are striped, and fits the most cars. Single gives each row of stalls its own aisle, handy along a fence or a road edge.
Stall width, Stall depth and Aisle width are in feet. They start at a standard 9 ft × 18 ft stall with a 24 ft two‑way aisle.
Drive lane around the edge leaves a lane (24 ft to start, adjustable) all the way round the inside of the lot, and fills the middle with stalls. With Double rows, the lot starts and ends with rows back to back, because the rows along the edge open straight onto the lane.
Number stalls numbers every space, row by row from the top left, starting from the First number you choose (101, say, for a vendor lot). The numbers stay upright however the lot is turned.
Shade stalls fills each space with a light wash of the canvas colour, under the lines. Over a satellite photo the black striping is hard to see on grass; shaded, every space reads as a pale panel with crisp lines. It's set per lot, so a lot on a paved area can stay unshaded.
Stalls are straight‑in (90°), and the rows run across the zone. Rotate the zone to turn them, and resize it to add rows or spaces. The stalls re‑stripe as you go.
The spaces belong to the zone. Delete the zone and they go with it, and they can't be moved one by one.
The legend counts them as Parking spaces under General Equipment → Site, and Show on drawing → Site → Parking hides the stalls and that count together (handy for an interior‑only view).

Use it when you need to show where guests, vendors or crew park, and how many cars the field holds.

Dance floors & stages (modular pieces)

Dance floors and stages are modular — built from panels/tiles.

Add one from Equipment (or a dance floor straight from the Tent Wizard).
Resize it, and it snaps to whole panels.
Set the tile/panel size to match your real inventory (e.g. 4′×4′ panels).
Give it a color of its own — a black stage, a white dance floor — from the toolbar's color swatch, just as with a table. The deck, its tile grid and a dance floor's trim all take the color. It shows while Canvas → Item colors is on; Reset returns it to the theme default.
Tick Solid fill to back the piece with a solid fill so a background image doesn't show through it — the same idea as the canvas‑wide Tent fill option, but chosen per stage or floor. The color still tints it on top.

Exits & egress paths

Exits mark where people leave; they attach to a tent edge and you can set the opening width.
Doors on an opening. Select an exit and tick Single door or Double door under Doors to draw the door itself, in the usual architectural notation: the leaf shown open at 90° with its swing arc. - A single door is one leaf the full width of the opening. Hinge side then chooses whether it opens left or opens right. - A double door is two leaves of half the width, hinged at both jambs, opening out from the center. - Either way the swing is drawn on the side opposite the EXIT text, so the two never sit on top of each other, and it turns with the exit when you rotate it onto a wall. Ticking one door clears the other; unticking leaves a plain opening.
Hiding the exit labels. Turn off Canvas → Labels → Exit text to drop the “EXIT” lettering and width from every exit piece. The opening and its jambs stay drawn — they're part of the wall — but since the plan no longer marks exits as exits, the legend stops counting them too, so a client drawing doesn't list exits it doesn't show. Turn it back on for the permit set.
The Path tool can be used to draw walking/exit routes as a width band with a centerline. You can set the path width, color, opacity, whether the band is stroked, and the centerline style (solid/dashed/dotted), and show its length — a path isn't only for egress; it's the tool for any run you want measured on the plan.
Turn a path into an arrow. Select a path and tick Arrow (end) to draw an arrowhead at its end, pointing along the last segment — handy for showing the direction of travel or the way out. The head sits at the end of the line and points out past it, so it still reads clearly when the band is stroked.
Label it. Under Show length on canvas there's a Label box. Whatever you type is drawn with the length, so a 65 ft run of fencing reads “65 ft fence”. The two are independent: turn the length off and just the word shows, and clearing the box removes it. Use it for fence lines, cable runs, or naming a route.

Use these to communicate safe exit routes and required egress widths on the plan.

Walls

Tents and shapes can both show walls, and Draeft tracks the totals for each.

A tent's own walls. Every tent side is made of wall sections, and each section can be one of four types:

clear — a see‑through / window wall, drawn as a hatched band
solid — a solid wall, drawn as a filled band
none — an opening, drawn as a bold dashed line so the gap is obvious
open — nothing drawn at all, for a side you'd rather show with placed wall pieces

Click a wall on the canvas to cycle just that section, or use the walls button in the toolbar to set the whole tent at once. Sections you've set by hand keep their setting when you change the tent‑wide one.

Walls on a shape. A shape's perimeter can be walled the same way, with one wall panel per side. Select the shape, then use the walls button in the toolbar to wall the whole outline at once, or click any single side to set just that one. Shapes start with no walls, so nothing changes until you ask for it. Use it for a marquee-style structure, a walled courtyard, or any footprint that needs sides. Its footage joins the tents' on the legend.
Free‑standing wall pieces (the Wall Section item in the Equipment tab) are separate segments you place yourself. Put one on or near a tent and it counts toward that tent's wall totals — handy for a partial wall — but it doesn't snap to the edge, so rotate it to line it up. Each piece has its own length and type.
Wall Types key — place this key so anyone reading the plan knows what the clear / solid / no‑wall symbols mean.

Anchoring — stakes & weights

Draeft can note how each tent leg is secured — useful for install crews and for the site‑plan portion of a permit. Turn it on with Canvas → Show on drawing → Tent details → Anchors.

Each perimeter leg shows either a stake (a tie‑off line ending in a stake, drawn 4 ft out on frame tents, 6 ft on pole tents and 7 ft on sailcloth) or a weight (a 2 ft × 2 ft ballast block).
Corner legs get two weights (or two stakes) splayed into a "V" pointing out along the diagonal; mid‑wall legs get one.
Select a tent, choose stakes or weights from the toolbar, then click any one anchor to switch that leg — so you can mix methods (e.g. stakes on grass, weights on the pad). Each leg cycles stakes → weights → an extra weight setting → hidden → back to stakes. The extra setting is whichever the leg isn't already: a corner drops from two blocks to a single weight on the diagonal, and a mid‑wall leg goes up from one block to two, splayed like a corner's.
Clicking a hidden anchor back. When a leg's anchor is hidden it leaves an invisible target where the anchor was — out beyond the wall, not on the leg — so clicking there brings it back. Hiding one also raises a short safety notice; dismiss that first.

Free‑standing weights. The anchors above are drawn from the tent's securing setting, one per leg. For ballast the crew sets by hand — a block holding a sidewall down, weighting a corner twice, or steadying something that isn't a tent — add a Weight from the Tent Equipment list and put it where it goes. It's the same 2 ft × 2 ft block, and it counts with the nearest tent's weighted legs on the legend, so the total is what actually gets loaded. Pick a different tent (or none) in its panel, and it hides with Canvas → Tent details → Anchors alongside the per‑leg blocks.

The legend numbers them: "10 legs · 14 weights" counts the blocks, not the legs, since corners and doubled legs carry two and hand‑placed weights add to the total — so it's what actually gets loaded.

Anchoring here is site‑plan notation, not an engineered hold‑down spec — confirm required stake or ballast ratings with your vendor or engineer.

Baseplates. Select a tent and use the Edit panel to show the plate each leg stands on, and to set its size. Plates run along the tent's length — end walls included, since the frame's beams run that way. They're per tent, so one tent on asphalt can show plates while another staked in grass doesn't.

The same panel sets the leg size — the blocks are drawn to whatever length and width you give them, so a narrow post and a wide footplate both look right. Each leg stands square to the wall it's on, so the legs along a tent's ends turn to face that way; the baseplate under them doesn't turn, because it follows the frame's beams. Note that a plate no wider than the leg block hides underneath it: at the defaults (12″ leg, 12″ across) only the ends show, so widen "Across" to see the whole plate.

Leg offset. Frame tents also take an offset, which moves every leg off the edge line along its own outward direction — negative pulls them inside the tent, positive pushes them out, and 0 (the default) keeps them centered on the line. Corner legs travel on their diagonal, so the legs stay square to the tent, and each baseplate rides along with its leg. Use it when the frame's legs don't sit on the fabric line.

Shapes get the same thing — a Baseplates checkbox and size in the shape's Edit panel, drawn at each corner.

Shapes — rooms, buildings & custom footprints

The Shape tool (on the canvas toolbar) draws any custom outline — an indoor room, a building, a patio, a pool, a stage, property lines, or anything that isn't a tent. Click each corner, then close the shape (click the first corner or press Enter).

After placing it, fine‑tune it: type exact side lengths and corner angles, and pin the sides or corners you want to hold fixed while you adjust the rest.
Fill and opacity. Turn on Fill to give the shape a solid background, pick its color, and drag the opacity slider to set how strongly it reads — light for a footprint you're laying out on top of, heavier for a building or an obstacle you want to stand out. Handy over a background image, where a see‑through fill keeps the aerial photo or blueprint visible underneath.
Shapes can carry walls on their perimeter — one panel per side. See Walls. A walled shape's panels are backed the same way a tent's are: with Fill on, a clear panel's hatch sits on a solid backing, so it covers a background image instead of letting it show through. With Fill off, the panels are hatching alone.
Shape corners can show baseplates too — see Anchoring.
Corner markers. Each corner shows a marker you can size, hide, or switch between dots (round, the default) and tent legs (square, drawn to match a frame tent's leg blocks). Use tent legs when the shape stands in for a structure that's actually staked or legged, so it reads the same as the tents beside it.
Use it to build an indoor room to lay out, trace a venue's footprint, or mark an obstacle you need to plan around.

This is what makes Draeft useful for non‑tented events too — build the room or space itself, then lay everything out inside it.

How lengths are written

Every length Draeft shows you is written in feet and inches — 30′ 6″. A whole number of feet drops the inches (30′), and anything under a foot shows just inches (8″). You'll see the same format on canvas labels, dimension lines, the shape panel and the measure tool, so two readings of the same distance always look the same.

When you type a length, Draeft is relaxed about how you write it: 30' 6", 30 6, and 30.5 all mean the same thing, and a plain number means feet. Small equipment (chair and table tops, band widths, stage heights) stays in inches, which is how it's ordered.

Measurements & dimensions

The Measure tool checks distances on the canvas.
Dimension lines add labeled measurements to the plan so the diagram communicates real sizes to your crew or client.
Group a measurement with the things it measures. Select them together (hold Ctrl or Shift and drag a box around them) and press G. The measurement then moves, rotates and copies with the group, and it's kept when you save the group as a Setup. An end that's stuck to an item always follows that item, grouped or not.

Canvas size — fitting the canvas to your plan

The canvas is the sheet your plan is drawn on: the gridded area with a visible edge, sized in real feet. A new plan starts at 150 ft × 100 ft, which suits most single‑tent events. Change it in the right panel's Canvas tab under Canvas size — type a Width and Height in feet (from 10 ft up to 1,000 ft each) and press Enter. The current size also shows in the bar at the bottom of the canvas.

The canvas is what you export. An export captures the whole canvas, edge to edge, and fits it onto the page — so the canvas size sets your print scale:

Size the canvas to the plan, not bigger. A 40 × 60 tent on a 500 ft canvas comes out tiny on the page, with acres of empty grid around it. Shrink the canvas to a little more than the plan and the same tent fills the sheet at the largest round scale that fits (the export dialog confirms the area being exported in feet, and the scale bar on the printout shows the resulting "1″ = X ft").
Don't let anything hang off the edge. Items can be dragged past the canvas boundary, but anything outside it is cut off in the export. If your layout outgrows the sheet, make the canvas bigger, then move things back inside.
Match the site. For an outdoor event, set the canvas to the usable area — the lawn, the lot, the field — and lay out within it; the empty grid then reads as real space you have left.

To size a canvas for a plan you already know:

Add up the footprint — tents, plus walkways, catering, generators, parking for the trucks — in feet.
Add a margin of 10–20 ft on each side so labels, dimensions and the legend have room.
Enter that as the Width and Height. Landscape (wider than tall) suits most printed pages.

Only the sheet changes: resizing the canvas never moves or scales what you've drawn. Zoom (scroll) and pan (drag an empty spot) to get around a large canvas on screen; the zoom percentage shows in the bottom bar. Exporting just part of a large canvas is what the Export area tool (Pro) is for.

Background images — blueprints, floor plans & satellite views

Import an image, place it behind your plan, and lay everything out on top of it. From the right panel's Canvas tab, under Background image, click Add image… and pick a file — for example:

An existing blueprint or floor plan of a building or venue, so you can plan a room without redrawing it.
A satellite or aerial image of an outdoor site, so you can plan a lawn, field, or estate event to scale.
A venue site map or photo.

The image lands on the canvas at an arbitrary size. Scale it before you lay anything out, so a 20 ft tent on top of it really is 20 ft on the ground. There are three ways, and you can combine them:

Scale image (most accurate). Once an image is in place, a 📐 Scale image button appears in the tool strip above the canvas. Click it, then click two points a known distance apart on the image — the two ends of a building wall, a tennis court, a parking bay, a fence line you've measured — and type the real distance in feet in the box that appears (Set, or press Enter). The whole image scales so those two points are that far apart; the first point you clicked stays put. Press Esc to cancel. Pick two points as far apart as you can: the longer the known distance, the smaller any error.
Width (ft). If you know the real‑world width the image covers — a satellite screenshot at a known scale, a floor plan whose overall width is printed on it — type it in the Width field. The height follows to keep the image's proportions.
Adjust on canvas. Tick Adjust on canvas (drag & scale) and the image gets handles: drag it to move it, and drag a corner to scale it (proportions stay locked). Use this to nudge a blueprint so its walls line up with the grid, then untick it so the image can't be moved by accident while you place tables on top of it.

Check the result with the Measure tool: measure something on the image whose size you know, and it should read right. If not, scale again — every method replaces the last, so nothing compounds.

Seeing the plan over the image:

Opacity — the slider fades the image back so your tents, tables and labels read clearly on top of it. Around 40–60% suits most photos; a pale blueprint can stay at 100%. It goes all the way to 0%, which hides the image completely without removing it — so you can draw over a photo, then export a clean plan with the same file. Opacity is part of the view, so a saved view remembers it: keep the photo full‑strength for the client and gone for the permit drawing, and switch between them with one click.
Tent fill — under the Canvas tab's Fills & color, this backs each tent with a solid fill so the image doesn't show through the tent.
Furniture fill — next to it, this does the same for every table (and the chairs around it), chair and sofa at once, so the furniture reads as solid pieces on top of a photo or blueprint. It's a view setting, so it saves with your saved views. Stages, dance floors and simple shapes have their own per‑item Solid fill instead. Shapes have their own Fill and opacity (see Shapes). Exits, fire extinguishers, no‑smoking signs, power and heaters always draw on top of tables and chairs, so a solid table never hides a sign or its EXIT text.
Remove image takes it out again; your plan stays.

The image is part of the plan: it saves with it, restores from the autosave, and prints in the export at the opacity you set. Make the canvas at least as large as the area of the image you need (see Canvas size), since anything past the canvas edge is cut off in the export.

Legend & equipment summary

The on‑canvas Legend summarizes what's in the plan (tent list, equipment counts, wall key). Click the legend to select it, then use its panel to toggle which sections show and adjust its size, so your exported diagram includes a clear key. The equipment counts double as a quick pull/pack list for the crew.

Shapes are listed under Site. A drawn room or building is part of the site rather than a piece of equipment. It appears under the Site subheading as a small block of its own: its name, its area in square feet, and its walled footage with the same swatches the tents use. It follows the same Square footage and Wall footage switches the tents do, and the Shapes switch hides it.
One equipment block, four subheadings. Everything else is counted under General Equipment, grouped so it reads the same whether or not there's a tent on the plan: - Safety — exits, fire extinguishers, no‑smoking signs, barricades. - Electric — power drops, distro boxes, power sources, heaters. - Furniture — tables by type, theater seats, chairs, sofas, stages, dance floors. - Site — parking spaces in parking lots, generators, then your drawn shapes. Generators still hide with the Electric switch, and parking with Furniture & structures.

Each subheading only appears when there's something under it, so an indoor plan with nothing but tables and chairs shows one short Furniture list.

Section toggles are part of a Saved view. Which blocks you show (tents, tent descriptions, legs, stakes & weights, square footage, wall footage, shapes, Safety, Electric, Furniture) is remembered by a Saved view, so a "Fire marshal" view can show Safety while a "Client" view hides the counts — see Saved views below.
The legend follows the Tables and Chairs switches. If you hide tables or chairs on the canvas (see Hiding tables and chairs), they drop off the legend counts too, so the key always matches what's drawn.
Each tent's block is headed by its name and size, with the tent's description beneath it when you've written one and the legend's Tent descriptions section is on (see Naming and describing a tent), its legs or poles, and then its floor area in square feet — which has its own Square footage switch if you'd rather not show it.
Safety & electric under each tent. With several tents, the plan‑wide "Fire ext: 5" doesn't tell you which tent is short one. Select the legend and tick Safety & electric under each tent (under Layout): each tent's block then lists its own exits, fire extinguishers, no‑smoking signs, power drops, distro boxes, power sources and heaters, so you can see at a glance what every tent has. An item belongs to the tent it sits in — or, for a heater ducted in from outside, the tent it reaches — and anything left over is listed under Other safety / Other electric in the General Equipment block. The Safety and Electric switches still apply, and the choice is saved with your saved views. Barricades and generators aren't tracked per tent, so they stay in the summary either way.
Putting the tents in your own order. Tents are listed in the order you placed them. To change it, select the legend and use the Tent order list at the bottom of its panel. Drag a tent up or down, or use its ▲ ▼ arrows, for example to put the main tents first and the utility tents after, or to group tents by area. Each row shows the tent's name and size, so two tents with the same name are easy to tell apart. The order is saved with the plan and carries into exports and shared links. It's one order for the whole plan, not a separate one for each saved view. A tent you add later starts at the bottom of the list. The list appears once the plan has two or more tents and the Tents section is switched on.

Canvas options & view

The right panel's Canvas tab controls how the plan looks. Everything here affects the on‑screen look and the export, and all of it is captured by a saved view. From the top:

Style — the visual theme (Colorful bays for building; Black ink or Blueprint for sharing and printing).
Saved views — named snapshots of the whole tab (see below).
Show on drawing — what is on the plan, in groups.
Labels — the text drawn on things.
Fills & color — how things are painted.
Canvas size and Background image (see their own sections).

Show on drawing — hiding things by group

The layers you can hide are grouped, and each group has a master checkbox:

Tent details — Walls, Anchors, Section lines. The tents themselves always show; these are the details drawn on them.
Safety — Fire safety (extinguishers and no‑smoking markers), Barricades.
Electric — Power (drops, sources, distro boxes), Heaters.
Furniture — Tables, Chairs, Sofas, Stages, Dance floors, Simple shapes (the ones left on the Furniture layer).
Florals & plants — every floral shape, floral path, tree and potted plant. They answer only to this switch, not to Simple shapes or Paths.
Site — Paths, Shapes, Simple shapes (the ones you set to the Site layer in their panel), Dimensions (the lines you drew with the Measure tool — a tent's own width × length brackets live under Labels → Tent dimensions), Trucks (generator trailers and box trucks), Parking (the stalls in parking lots, and their legend count).
Fill zones — the dashed zone outlines and labels; the tables a zone packed, theater seats and parking stalls stay either way.

Apart from Tent details, the groups are named for the kind of kit rather than the structure it sits under — the same words the legend uses — so the panel reads properly on a plan with no tent in it.

Tick or untick a group's box to show or hide everything in it at once. Click the group's name (or the ▸) to open it and switch its layers one by one. When a group is partly hidden its box shows a dash and the row says some hidden, so you can see at a glance what's off without opening anything — and clicking a dashed box turns the whole group back on. A Show everything link appears at the top of the section whenever anything is hidden; it resets all the layers (labels and fills are left as they are).

A few rules worth knowing:

Hiding Tables also hides the chairs drawn around them; hiding Chairs clears every chair — standalone, around tables, and theater‑zone seats — but keeps the tables. Leave Tables on and Chairs off to see table tops with no chairs.
Hiding Shapes hides drawn rooms and footprints along with their walls; hiding Paths hides every path, egress or measured; hiding Dimensions clears the measurements you drew, handy for a clean client drawing that you can re-show for the crew.
Hidden things are only hidden: nothing is deleted, they can't be selected or deleted by accident while hidden, and turning a layer back on restores everything exactly.
The legend counts follow the layers — hidden tables, chairs, sofas, barricades, generators, stages, dance floors and shapes drop out of the key so it matches the drawing.
Hover over any row for a note on exactly what it covers.

Labels, fills & color

Labels holds the text switches: Tent names, Tent descriptions, Tent dimensions, Exit text (off also drops exits from the legend), Stage & floor labels, Chair numbers (for seating charts), and the Table labels choice — size, custom label, or none.

Fills & color holds the painting switches: Tent fill and Furniture fill (solid backing so a background image doesn't show through tents, or through tables, chairs and sofas), Item colors (show or suppress custom per‑item colors, which you set from the color swatch in the toolbar above a selection), Padding band (the crosshatched aisle band around tables and simple shapes), and Floral texture (the leaves, blossoms and canopies on florals and plants; off shows them as plain green outlines).

Saved views — one-click looks for each audience

Every stakeholder wants something different from the same plan: the fire marshal needs exits and extinguishers, the caterer just their corner, the client a clean picture. Saved views let you snapshot a complete look — the style, every layer, label and fill switch, the background image's opacity, and which legend sections are shown — under a name, then switch between looks with one click.

In the Canvas tab, set up the style and toggles the way you want (including which legend sections show — select the legend to set those), type a name under Saved views (e.g. "Fire marshal", "Caterer", "Client") and click Save view.
Click a saved view's name to switch the whole canvas to that look — then export. Undo (Ctrl/Cmd + Z) reverses a switch.
Saving under an existing name updates that view; the ✕ button deletes one.
Saved views live on your device and are available in every plan — set up "Caterer" once and it's there for all your events. Saved plan files also carry a copy, so a colleague who opens your file gets your views too (any they don't already have are added to their list).

Common questions

I switched views and my walls/markers disappeared. That view was saved with those layers hidden. Switch to another view, or turn the toggles back on and save the view again.
My background photo vanished when I switched views. That view was saved with the image's opacity at 0%. Drag the slider back up under Canvas → Background image — the image is still there — and save the view again if you want it shown in that look. Views saved before opacity became part of the view leave it as it is.
Do my views transfer to another computer? Views live on the device you made them on. To bring them along, save a plan and open that file on the other computer — its views are added there automatically.

Light or dark interface

Draeft's panels, menus and dialogs come in a dark and a light look. The button with the half-filled circle, just left of the ? in the top bar, switches between them:

System (the half circle) follows your computer's own light or dark setting, and changes with it.
Light (the sun) and Dark (the moon) stay put whatever your computer does.

The first click always switches to the opposite of what you're looking at; the tooltip on the button says what the next click will do.

This only changes Draeft's own interface. Your plan keeps its Style (Colorful, Black ink or Blueprint), and the exports and share links you send look the same either way. The choice is remembered on this computer and browser, and share links you open here follow it too.

Keyboard shortcuts

Click an item on the canvas to select it, then:

Delete or Backspace — remove it.
Ctrl/Cmd + Z — undo; Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + Z — redo.
Ctrl/Cmd + D — duplicate.
R — rotate 90° (Shift + R rotates the other way).
Arrow keys — nudge into place (hold Alt for tiny steps, Shift for big ones).
G — group the selected items together; Shift + G — ungroup. A locked item in a group stays where it is: dragging, nudging or rotating the rest of the group leaves it in place. A selected group also has its own rotate handle above it: drag it to turn the group by any angle (it turns about the middle of the dashed box), with Shift for 15° steps. One Undo puts it back.
Alt + click — when shapes are stacked, cycle down to select the one underneath.
Esc — deselect.

Saving, loading & exporting

Autosave keeps your work in the browser as you go, so a crash or a closed tab won't lose it.
New — start a fresh, blank plan.
Save — saves your plan to a file (to keep, back up, or send to a colleague). The first save asks where to put the file; after that, Save writes straight back to the same file with no dialog. Save As saves a copy under a new name or location.
Save As makes a separate plan. Once a plan has a file, saving it under a new name gives you two independent plans: you carry on working in the copy, and the original stays exactly as it was — both as a file and in Autosaves. Editing the copy can never change the original. (Using Save As for a plan's first save is just its first save, so it stays one plan.)
Load Plan — open a previously saved plan. The opened file becomes the one Save writes back to.
Double‑click a plan file to open it (Chrome or Edge). Install Draeft as an app while you're in the editor (the Install icon at the right of the address bar), and your computer will open plan files (they end in .draeft) straight in Draeft. The first time, it asks whether to let Draeft open them — say yes. Save then writes back to that same file.
Autosaves — Draeft automatically keeps a backup of each plan you work on, right in your browser. Open Autosaves to switch back to a recent plan, rename it, or remove it. These are a safety net, not your saved files: only your most recent plans are kept (older ones drop off automatically), and clearing your browser data erases them. To keep a plan for real, use Save to store it as a file you own and can back up or share.
In some browsers plans always save as downloads, so each save goes to your Downloads folder (or asks where to save) instead of updating the file in place — in those browsers there's no separate Save As button, since every save is a fresh download anyway. This includes Firefox, Safari, and Brave (Brave switches off the file feature for privacy; searching Brave's settings flags for "File System Access API" and enabling it turns in‑place saving on).
Setups (Pro) — save a whole cluster of items (a tent with its tables, chairs, dance floor…) and drop it into any plan in one click. See Reusable setups below.
Export — download your plan to email or print for your rental company, caterer, planner, venue, or permit office. Exports print to scale (a declared 1″ = X ft) with an embedded scale bar, so anyone can measure straight off the printout. Free users get a JPG; Pro adds a scaled, printable PDF, page sizes, quality options, and removes Draeft branding. Export areas export just part of the plan — see below.
If your computer won't let Draeft write to the exact file you picked — most often when the folder is synced by OneDrive, Google Drive or Dropbox, or a security tool is watching it — Draeft saves the export to your Downloads folder instead and tells you it did. Your export is never lost to this.
Undo/Redo and a plan name (used as the default file name) are at the top.

Export areas — close-ups you can export again

Export areas are a Pro feature.

An export area is a box on your plan that an export can be cropped to: the reception tent, the cook tent, the bar. Areas are saved in the plan, so when you move tables in the reception tent you just export "Reception tent" again and get exactly the same framing as last time.

Save an area. Click ⬚ Export area above the canvas and drag a box. It's saved as "Area 1" and becomes the area your next export uses. Drag more boxes to save more areas.
Adjust it. While ⬚ Export area is on, drag the area's frame (its dashed outline) to move it, or drag a side or corner handle to resize it. Sides snap to whole feet and the opposite side stays where it is, so you can bring one side in a few feet. Drag the round rotate handle to turn it. It snaps to square and to each tent's angle, and holding Shift turns it in 15° steps.
The Canvas tab's Export areas list shows every area. Click one to pick it, or Full canvas to export everything. For the picked area you can rename it, type an exact Width, Height or Angle, or delete it (✕).
Match tent squares an area up with an angled tent. Pick the tent and the area centres on it and turns the least it takes to line up with it. The export turns with the area, so the tent comes out square on the page. Table numbers, tent names, measurements, the legend and the scale bar all read level.
Exporting. With an area picked, the button reads Export area. The Export dialog has an Area menu, so you can switch between areas or Full canvas right there.
Export all areas. With two or more areas saved, the Export dialog has an Export all areas button. It exports every area in the view you're looking at, with the format, quality and branding chosen in the dialog. As a PDF you get one file with a page per area, each page turned to fit its area, so it's ready to print or send as a single packet. As JPG or PNG you get one image per area, named after the plan and the area ("Smith-Wedding-Reception-tent.jpg"). You pick a folder once and they all save into it. Browsers that can't save into a folder (Firefox, Safari, Brave) get them all in one .zip file instead ("Smith-Wedding-areas.zip"), so there's one save rather than one per image. Set up the view first (a saved view like "Caterer", say) and every area exports in it. A note under the top bar counts through the areas as they export ("Exporting area 2 of 5 · Bar…") and says when they're done.
Normally only the picked area's outline shows on the canvas. Tick Show all areas under the list to outline every area at once (the others drawn fainter), to see how they fit together. While ⬚ Export area is on, click another area's frame to pick it, even one drawn inside the picked area. Dragging inside any area draws a new one. Outlines never appear in an export. Press Esc with the tool on to go back to exporting the full canvas. Your areas stay saved either way.

Sharing is a Pro feature.

Export gives someone a frozen picture. Share gives them the plan: click Share in the top bar and Draeft publishes a read‑only copy and hands you a link to send.

It works on a phone. The link opens on any device, no account and no app to install: the plan is fitted to the screen when it opens, you pinch to zoom and drag to move around, and the options live behind an Options button at the top so they don't eat the drawing. (The editor itself still needs a computer — see Good to know.)

It works with no signal. Open the link once where you have service — in the van, at the office — and the plan is saved on the phone. Out in a field with no bars it still opens, still switches views, still zooms; the bar shows Offline so you know you're looking at the copy on your device rather than a fresh one. It reconnects and refreshes by itself when signal comes back.

Add to Home Screen from the browser menu gives it an icon — Draeft Viewer — and opens it full‑screen like an app. The app opens on Shared plans — every plan you've opened from a link, newest first, each one openable with or without signal. There's also a box to paste a share link, which is how you get a newly received plan into the installed app: tapping a link in Messages opens your browser rather than the app, so copy the link and paste it here once. Inside a plan, Plans in the top bar takes you back to the list.

Whoever opens it — the crew chief on site, the venue, the client — can:

zoom and pan around the plan,
switch the style,
flip any layer on or off (walls, anchors, furniture, site, labels…),
fade the background image back, or hide it, with the opacity slider,
and apply the saved views you made, so "show me just the exits" is their click, not another email to you.

What they can't do is change the plan. Nothing they toggle is saved, and none of it touches your copy.

A few things worth knowing:

One link per plan — update it, don't re-send it. The link shows the plan as it was when you published. Change the plan, click Share again, and the same link updates: everyone you already sent it to sees the new version on their next refresh. The dialog says Link updated so you know it went to the existing one. (Underneath there's a "publish a separate new link" option, for when you deliberately want a second, frozen copy — one link for the client and another for the crew, say.)
Updating is tied to this browser. Permission to change a published link is kept on the computer you published from — not in the link, and not in the plan file, or anyone you sent it to could rewrite it. On another computer, Share publishes a new link instead.
Your saved views travel with it — that's the point of sending a link rather than a PDF.
Links expire after 30 days, and the date is shown both when you publish and in the viewer. Updating a link pushes the date out again, so a plan you keep current stays reachable right through the build.
Anyone with the link can view it, like an unlisted document. Send it to the people who need it.
No Draeft watermark on a link you publish — you're Pro — and no account is needed to open one, which matters for crews who don't have company logins.

Reusable setups — save a layout once, drop it in anywhere

Setups are a Pro feature — the Setups dialog explains what they are and invites you to upgrade. Setups you saved before are not deleted; they reappear in the dialog if you upgrade later.

If you build the same arrangement again and again — a 20×20 chef tent with its prep tables and chairs, or a head table with a dance floor beside it — save it as a setup and reuse it in one click.

Save a setup. Arrange the pieces, then select them on the canvas: click the first item, then hold Shift and click each of the others (a tent, its tables, chairs, dance floor, any shapes, and any egress paths). Open Setups at the top and click Save … as a setup — it tells you how many items it will capture. Give it a name (e.g. "20×20 Chef Tent") and it's stored.
Use a setup. Click Setups at the top, find the one you want, and click Insert. The whole cluster drops onto your plan as a single group you can drag into place, then ungroup if you want to fine‑tune individual pieces.
Where setups live. They're kept in this browser, so they're available in every plan you make on this computer — build "Chef Tent" once and it's there for all your events. They work like Autosaves in one important way: clearing your browser data erases them, and they don't follow you to another computer. To keep one for real, Export it to a file you own — that same file is how you send a setup to a colleague.
Share a setup. Use Export on a setup to download it as a file, then send it to a colleague; they open Setups → Import setup file to add it to their own library. Older single‑tent template files still import here too.

Saving a setup never changes your current plan — it just remembers the arrangement for next time.

Permits & site plans

Draeft is well suited to the site‑plan portion of a tent permit for your local authority (AHJ). A clean, to‑scale layout — tent sizes and positions, exits and egress paths, walls, anchoring, heaters, and distances to nearby structures — covers what most site‑plan reviews look for. Export a scaled PDF and submit it.

It's a layout and communication tool, not engineering. Where your jurisdiction requires stamped structural drawings, wind or anchoring calculations, or fire‑code sign‑off, supplement Draeft's site plan with those documents. Always confirm requirements with your AHJ and vendor.

Pro

Draeft is free to use for building plans and downloading a JPG. Pro unlocks:

PDF export, page‑size and quality options, and branding controls
The Export area tool, for exporting just part of a plan
Setups — saving a cluster of items and reusing it in any plan
Share a link — send a live, read‑only plan instead of a flat export

Upgrade from the app's Upgrade to Pro button or the Draeft Events website.

Entering your key. Click Have a license? in the top bar (or the ? button), paste the key into License key, and click Activate Pro. The field always starts empty — paste the whole key in, with no spaces or line breaks around it.

If activation doesn't take, the message says which of three things happened:

"That key isn't valid" — the key itself wasn't recognized. Check for a missing or extra character, and that you copied the whole thing.
"This key can't be activated" — the key is known, but can't take another device: all 3 are in use, or it has expired. Manage devices opens the portal, where you can free a slot.
"Activation is having trouble right now" — nothing to do with your key; try again in a minute.

If you saved setups before Pro: nothing is deleted. They stay in this browser and reappear in the Setups dialog if you upgrade.

FAQ & troubleshooting

Do I need to install anything? No — Draeft runs in your web browser.
Can I use Draeft without tents — for indoor or outdoor events? Yes. Draw the space with the Shape tool (a room, hall, or footprint), or import a blueprint or satellite image as a background, then lay out tables, chairs, staging, and more on top.
Will I lose my work if I close the tab? Your plan autosaves in the browser, and you can Save to a file for safe keeping. Clearing your browser data removes the autosave, so save important plans to a file.
What units does it use? Feet and inches by default. Frame > Custom tents can be entered in centimeters via the Units toggle, but they convert to imperial when placed on the canvas.
Can I match my real tent and dance‑floor sizes? Yes — use Custom tents and set the modular tile size to your inventory.
How accurate are the diagrams? They follow common industry standards but are representations — confirm exact dimensions with your vendor, since brands differ.
How do I share a plan? Three ways: - Share a link (Pro) — click Share in the top bar and send the link. Anyone can open it on a phone or computer, with no account or app: a live, read‑only copy they can zoom and pan, which keeps working offline once opened. See Share a link above. - Export a JPG, or (on Pro) a PDF, for a fixed picture to print or attach. - Send the saved plan file to a colleague who also uses Draeft, so they can open and edit it.
Can I use Draeft for a tent permit? Yes — it's well suited to the site‑plan portion of an AHJ permit (a to‑scale layout with tents, exits, egress paths, walls, and anchoring). Supplement it with stamped engineering or fire‑code documents where your jurisdiction requires them.
Nothing happens when I click the canvas after picking a tool. Give tools a moment to activate after selecting them, then click.
My export is tiny, with a lot of empty space around the plan. The export captures the whole canvas, so shrink the canvas to fit the plan (Canvas → Canvas size) and it prints at a larger scale. See Canvas size.
Part of my plan is missing from the export. It's past the canvas edge. Make the canvas larger, then drag the items back inside the boundary.
The tables look the wrong size on my blueprint / photo. The background image isn't scaled yet. Use 📐 Scale image: click two points a known distance apart on the image and enter the real length. See Background images.

Glossary

Canvas — the drawing area where your plan lives.
Frame / structure tent — a tent with no interior poles; fully open floor.
Pole tent — a tent supported by center and perimeter poles, with peaks.
Sailcloth tent — an upscale translucent tent with shaped/rounded ends.
Section — a building block of a tent (the ends and mids you combine in the construction string).
Bay — the space between two legs or side poles.
End / mid — the end pieces and the middle sections of a tent.
Construction string — shorthand describing a tent's sections (e.g. EMME).
Leg spacing — the distance between a tent's legs along a side.
Zone — an outlined area Draeft can auto‑fill with seating.
Floral — a floral shape (bed, centerpiece, hedge) or floral path (garland, ivy run) from the Decor section of the Equipment tab.
Tree / potted plant — a round plant from the Decor section, drawn from above at its real spread.
Canvas size — the real‑world width and height of the sheet you draw on; the export captures exactly this area, so it sets the print scale.
Serpentine table — a curved table, set by its inner radius, width and sweep angle; pieces join to build curved buffets, bars and head tables.
Oval table — a rectangular table with a curved end bowed out on each end; the peak is how far each end bows past the straight section.
Sofa — lounge furniture with fixed 4″ arms and a 4″ back; you set its depth and length, and the seat is what's left inside the frame.
Simple shape — a plain named rectangle, circle, oval, triangle or polygon standing in for anything the equipment list doesn't have; drawn, not counted.
Modular piece — a stage or dance floor built from panels/tiles.
Egress — the exit routes and the space people use to leave safely.
Legend — the on‑canvas key summarizing the plan's contents.
Setup — a saved cluster of items (a tent with its tables, chairs, dance floor…) you can drop into any plan in one click. Stored in your browser and available across all your plans.

Draeft Events · draeftevents.com

Last updated 2026-11-10.