Seating Arrangement

This form allows you to create a list of seating arrangement schemes. You can see it in the following picture:

Each seating arrangement scheme includes room plan and seating arrangement list that specifies the places of guests. Seating arrangement scheme represents variant of table and bench allocation and specification of the guest places. You can design several seating arrangement schemes for the same event and celebration place. In most cases one event and one celebration place will have only one seating arrangement scheme. But even then for some time several temporary schemes from which you should select the best one may exist. All superfluous schemes can be deleted when they are not needed anymore.

As you can see in the picture and as were indirectly mentioned above you should select Event and its Celebration place before creating seating arrangement scheme. Each scheme is attached to the pair of Event and Celebration place.

So first of all select event from the corresponding drop-down list on the top site of the form. By default Wedding event is selected.

After selecting event Celebration place drop-down list will contain places where selected event will be celebrated. By default first item in list is selected. To specify places where to celebrate some event you should use means of Events form.

Below drop-down lists you can see page control containing three pages. First page allows you to create seating arrangement scheme and specify following attributes for it:

• Name
• Room Length
• Room Width

Each seating arrangement scheme has its corresponding room. Here you should specify size of this room in feet.

Now let's look at the following picture:

This picture illustrates Room Plan page. On the top of the page you can see Seating arrangement scheme drop-down list. Select from this list scheme for which you want to draw room plan. By default is selected scheme that was selected in the Seating Arrangement Schemes page. And vice versa, scheme that you select in this drop-down list will be automatically selected in the Seating Arrangement Schemes page.

Rest space of the page is occupied by graphical editor allowing you to draw room plan for current scheme. This editor is divided into three parts:

• Toolbar
• Work area
• Legend

Toolbar is located directly under Seating arrangement scheme drop-down list. It contains buttons for drawing tools and for commands that can be performed on objects. These two groops of buttons are separated by vertical line. Here is the list of drawing tools:

• Select Object
• Table
• Bench
• Other Object
• Door
• Window
  

The list of commands that can be performed on objects contains following commands (what is object will be described a little later):

• Rotate Object
• Edit
• Delete

Some commands such as object moving and resizing can be performed with mouse similar to window moving and resizing. You can also move and resize object using Edit command.

Work area is located below toolbar. If some seating arrangement scheme is selected in the drop-down list work area contains rectangle with green border. This rectangle represents room and border represents its walls. If you dont see this rectangle then you can't perform any drawing operation. In this case go to the first page, create seating arrangement scheme there and then again return to this page.

Now let's return to the question: "What is object?" Object is a table, bench, "other object", a door or window that is located at the certain place of the room plan. Some objects (tables, benches and "other objects") can be located only inside the room and other (doors and windows) can be located only within the wall.

To add table, bench or "other object" to the room plan first of all select appropriate tool on a toolbar. Then move mouse pointer to the space between the walls. Pointer should not be positioned on a wall. It has to be moved to the point where one of the object's corners should be located. After that press left mouse button, move pointer to the opposite corner of the object and release pressed button. Now you will see dialog window where you have to enter attributes for object being created. Click on OK button to finish object creation. Object will be added to the diagram.

Let's take a brief look at three types of objects described above:

• Table object represents table with adjacent chairs. That's why you should not allocate benches near each table. Benches are intended for other purposes.
• Bench objects should be used to specify objects different from tables where guests can be seated. Separate chairs can also be represented by bench objects. For example, you can use benches to draw a church hall and specify places for guests in the church.
• Other object is a type of object to represent objects different from tables and benches. For example piano, column and acoustic systems all are "other objects".

Each of these three object types has different set of attributes. Here is a list of all possible attributes:

• Name - short description of the object
• Seating number - number of persons that can be seated at the table or bench.
• Shape - shape of the object (elliptic or rectangular)
  • X coordinate
  • Y coordinate
  • Length
  • Width

Process of doors and windows adding is much similar to the process described above, but you can start dragging them only when mouse pointer is located over the wall. Both doors and windows have the same three attributes:

Wall - wall within which door or window is located:
Left - passes along left side of the work area
Right - passes along right side of the work area
Far - passes along top side of the work area
Near - passes along bottom side of the work area
Coordinate - position of the object relatively to the far or left wall of the room (depending on the wall where this object is located)
Width

Toolbar also contains Select Object tool which is used to select object or group of objects and manipulate with them. When these tool is active you can click on any object to select it. In this case other objects will be unselected. Selected object has red border while unselected objects have black border. To select multiple objects click on them while holding Ctrl button. The group of objects can only be moved or deleted. Other operations should be executed on single objects. Note that you can't select at the same time objects that are located inside the room and objects within the wall.

Select Object tool also allows you to move and resize any object by simple mouse dragging operations.

In the room plan that is depicted in the work area you can't see names of objects. But you can also notice that each table and bench has some number. These numbers are assigned automatically and only for tables and benches. On the right site of the form you can see Legend. Legend shows names of the objects. Each item of the legend contains object's number and name. So you can determine object's name by its number.

There is one more useful feature of the legend. When you select object or group of objects in the legend the same objects are selected in the work area. And when you select objects in the work area corresponding items of the legend are also selected. Due to this feature process of determining object's name becomes even simpler. But to determine the name of the object different from table and bench you should select this object and press Edit button.

You can change position of the object in legend using buttons on the right of the legend. These buttons move selected object (only one) up and down by changing its number.

After room plan is ready you should go to Seating Arrangement page to assign seating places for each person. You can see this page in the following picture:

This page as well as Room Plan page contains Seating arrangement scheme drop-down list. Below it the list of tables and benches is located. In this list you can see additional attribute called Number of free places. It shows how many more persons can be seated at the table or bench.

On the bottom site of the form the list of persons seated at the current table or bench is located. To add persons to this list click on Add button. The following dialog will be displayed:

In the lower table select persons you want to add to current table or bench. Note that you can't add at a time persons from different parties.

As bride and groom are not guests they are not included to guest list. But they also have to be seated. To add bride and groom to seating list for current table or bench click on Add Bride and Add Groom buttons.

Reports

As you can see in this picture you can't select report type. All you can do is to select one of two values for filter:

• All schemes for current event and celebration place
• Only current scheme