How do I fill a room with tables around a stage and dance floor?

Place the fixed pieces first — stage, dance floor, bars, screens — then let Auto-Fill do the seating. It has two modes, and the difference matters.

A plain fill lays a grid and ignores what is already there. Tick Flow around obstacles and it places tables individually, routing around everything in the space.

The two modes

Grid block. Fill the active area lays a parametric block of tables. It stays live: change the rows, the spacing or the chairs per table and the whole block regenerates. But a grid is a grid — it will happily run straight through your stage and across the dance floor, because it does not know they are there.

Flow around obstacles. Tick the box and the same fill places tables one at a time, skipping any position that would overlap something already placed. Nothing lands on the stage, in the dance floor, or inside a bar. The trade-off is in the label: you get loose tables rather than one editable block.

Which to use

1. Use the grid block while you are still tuning — an empty space, deciding between 8 and 10 per table.
2. Switch to flow once the fixed pieces are in and you want a plan that is actually buildable.
3. Either way, tick Number the tables so the set comes out numbered for your captains.
4. One undo removes an entire fill if it is not what you wanted.

Expect the count to drop

In a 150′ × 90′ ballroom, a clean grid returns sixty-five tables. Add a stage, two screens, a dance floor and a bar on each side, then flow around them, and you get forty-six. That second number is the one to quote — it is the one you can actually set.