Where the audience sits is the first design decision, and it belongs on the plan. A venue in Setplot has a form: proscenium, end-on, thrust, in the round or traverse. The form decides the shape of the deck, whether there are wings, what the datum line is called and where the banks of seating stand, and every drawing, check and printed sheet reads it. Forms are part of every plan, including the free one.
Pick the form
- Nobody is asked to choose before drawing. Every preset arrives in its natural form: the Playhouse behind an arch, the Studio and the School hall end-on, and Thrust and In the round as presets of their own.
- To change it, open the venue and pick another plate at the top of the Stage section. The plan redraws as that stage straight away, banks and all.
- Pick again whenever the room changes. A hall that seats one way this term and in the round the next is the same venue with a different form.
Promenade and immersive stagings have no fixed stage, so there is no plan to draw for them, and Setplot does not pretend otherwise.
What changes on the plan
- The deck. A thrust juts into the house with its own width and square or chamfered corners; a stage in the round or a traverse has no wings and no apron, because the space around it belongs to the audience.
- The datum. Behind an arch the origin sits on the plaster line. On an open stage the same line is the setting line, which is what the drawing calls it.
- The house. Banks of seating sit on the plan on every form, with a front-row line and the bank's name. Until you measure the room they are an estimate drawn from the stage, marked as such, and they follow the stage as you change it. Enter a bank's distance from the stage and its width in the House section and the estimate becomes a measurement.
- The fields. A thrust adds its width and corners. A round or traverse stage hides the wings, and the proscenium height becomes the grid height, which is still what the rig's trims are checked against.
What follows the form
- Set changes route through the nearest doorway. Behind an arch that is a wing door; on a stage with no wings it is a vomitory, and the shift plot says which.
- The rig. A front-of-house bar belongs over a bank of the house, and the first one you add hangs there. In the round you get one over each bank.
- The paperwork. The stage map and the lighting plot draw the outline and the banks, the title block names the form, and the section is cut across the stage in the round and on a traverse, with a bank at either end.
- Sightlines. The plan’s sightline lens works with the seating banks on all five forms. In the 3D model, choose a position along a bank and inspect the view. Seating starts as an estimate unless you enter measurements. The checks use simplified geometry, a fixed eye height and sampled bank positions; they do not guarantee the view from every seat in a surveyed auditorium.
What stays put
Nothing moves when you change the form. Every mark is measured from the centre line and the setting line on every form, so a set built for a playhouse keeps its positions when the production visits a studio in the round. The fit check and the model tell you what no longer works; the pieces stay where you put them.