This is the Setplot documentation: short pages, one task each, written for somebody with the drawing board already open. The tree beside this page is all of it, and the fastest way in is to make something, so that is what this page does.
A production is the show file: the venue it stands in, the sets that carry it, the rig over the top. Creating the first one takes about a minute, and everything else in Setplot hangs off it.
Create the production
- Sign in and open the dashboard.
- Choose New production and give it the show's name. The name is yours alone; it appears on exports and paperwork exactly as you write it.
- Pick a starting venue from the presets. Studio, School hall, Playhouse, Thrust and In the round are all there, and every dimension of any preset can be changed later, so this choice is a starting point rather than a commitment.
- Select Create. You land on the drawing board with an empty stage.
Draw the first set
- The venue draws itself: the proscenium, the walls, the centre line and the plaster line, all at true metric scale. The plan is always in real units, so a 4.2 meter flat is 4.2 meters on screen no matter how far you zoom.
- Open the piece palette and drag a flat onto the stage. Press R to rotate it while dragging, or use the rotate handle after it lands.
- Drag in furniture the same way. Each piece is a real object with a name, so the same chair stays the same chair in every set you build.
- Switch to the sets bar and choose Add set when the first arrangement is right. The second set starts as a copy of the first, which is usually what a set change is: most of the room, some of it moved.
A free account includes three active productions and two venues per production. Archiving a finished production makes room for another. Standard exports are included, with a Setplot credit on drawn sheets. Older unpinned saves follow the version history retention rules.
What to look at next
The 3D view stands itself up as you draw: flats extrude, furniture becomes white-card blocks, and the audience viewpoint presets show the set from the house. Exports under the share menu print the groundplan, the lighting plot and the shift plots from the same document, so the paperwork never drifts from the drawing.
When the show outgrows one space, add a second venue and fit the same set into it: that is the next guide.