How do I keep tables clear of the walls and the stage?

A room full of tables is only half the job. The photographer needs the floor in front of the stage, the bar needs a queue, and the walls need an aisle the room can empty through. Auto-Fill keeps that floor clear for you, and you decide how much.

Set the clearances before you fill

1. Open Auto-Fill Setup on the left rail and pick the layout, table and chairs as usual.
2. Under Keep clear, From the walls is the aisle every fill leaves at the walls: 5 ft, the aisle most rooms are planned around, until you change it.
3. Set From objects already placed for the stage, the bars, the dance floor and the room's own columns. At 0 a table may touch them but never stand on them.
4. Press Fill the active area.

Point at either number and the plan shows what it means: a red band inside the walls and an amber margin round everything already placed. Any table that would stand in them is skipped. The panel remembers your numbers for the next fill, so a venue's house rule only has to be typed once.

A number you set belongs to the block. Widen it, drag it towards a wall, turn it or nudge it with the arrow keys, and it keeps the same floor clear. Tables that no longer fit are set aside, tables that fit again come back, and a short message says what changed. Until you set a wall number of your own, the 5 ft aisle shapes the first fill only, exactly as Auto-Fill always has, and a widened block may reach the walls.

See what was skipped, and keep one anyway

Click the block. The tables the clearances set aside show faded where they would have stood, and the right-hand panel says how many. Point at one to see why it was skipped. Click it to keep it: it stays even though it breaks the rule, because you know the room.

To hand those tables back to the rule later, press Re-check them on the right-hand panel.

Switch the fit off

Sometimes the drawing is the problem, not the table: a traced wall a foot out, or a provisional stage you are about to move. Untick Fit to the room and every table is placed, even in a wall or on something. Tick it again and the block fits the room as before.

When nothing fits

If a room is too narrow to keep the clearance you set, Auto-Fill tells you, works out the most it can keep and still place a table, and offers that as one button. It never lowers your number on its own, because it may be a fire marshal's.

The same clearances are on a placed block too: click it and change them on the right-hand panel. For the bigger question of how many tables a room holds, see how many tables fit.