Venue Designer is built for AVL and production designers who need a fast venue shell: building outline, stage and thrust, risers, drop ceilings, rooms, partitions, stairs, balcony, sightlines, and rigging placeholders — then clean handoff via SketchUp (DAE) or STL. Work stays on your machine unless you export it.
Toggle between PLAN, SECTION, and 3D using the buttons in the top header.
The first sidebar section. Set total Width and Depth in feet — these are the inner hall dimensions (usable floor plan edge to edge). Optional Wall Thickness adds a structural shell outside that rectangle: in plan you see a frame around the floor; in 3D and exports, wall slabs sit beyond the inner footprint so the interior stays W×D. Roof and ceiling geometry follow the outer shell when thickness is enabled.
Optional shell door (same section) cuts a glazed opening in one perimeter wall for load-in — plan, 3D, and DAE/STL exports stay in sync.
Backstage depth (the strip of space behind the stage to the back wall) is set here too. Audience depth is whatever's left between stage front and front wall.
Three independently configurable deck structures.
Stage front edges are valid snap targets for walls (with center, edge, and bow-apex variants), and valid attachment edges for stairs.
Add raised platforms (risers) or recessed pits to the audience floor. Each region has plan position, width/depth, elevation (positive = riser, negative = pit), an optional curved front, and a label.
Risers act as parents for stairs: any stair can attach to a riser's front/back/left/right edge and ascend from the audience floor up to the riser's elevation. Pits show in section as dashed below-floor outlines.
Curved-front risers feed their bow shape into stairs attached to that front, so a curved riser gets curved-front stairs automatically.
Rectangular regions where the ceiling drops below the surrounding ceiling/roof. Each zone has plan position (X horizontal, Y depth), size (width × depth), Position Z (Height) = elevation of the slab's underside, Thickness, color, and label.
Zones are auto-clamped so the slab can't poke through the building roof. The slab exports as a free-floating block — no anchored drop walls — so when you lower Position Z the whole block descends rather than being tethered to the ceiling above.
Add stairs through a drop ceiling using the + ADD STAIRS THROUGH CEILING button on each zone card. The slab gets a rectangular hole cut for the stair footprint, in 3D AND in the SketchUp DAE export. Multiple stairs through one zone produce multiple holes.
Self-contained spaces inside the building (green rooms, dressing rooms, bars, offices, restrooms). Each room has plan position, size, ceiling height, wall thickness, label, color, and a door indicator on one side.
Position Z (Floor Elevation) raises the room's floor to a given height, so you can model second-floor / mezzanine rooms. The room's walls and ceiling stack on top of the elevated floor. Default 0 = ground floor. The room's height auto-clamps so the top still fits under the ceiling/roof above.
Rooms can be duplicated, deleted, and snapped to ceiling height with the SNAP button. The "Top follows ceiling/roof" toggle makes a room's height auto-track the ceiling height at its location.
Free-form interior walls. Each wall has a center point, length, angle, height, thickness, and an optional "follow roof/ceiling" toggle.
Walls auto-snap to a generous menu of targets while dragging: building edges, stage/thrust/b-stage edges and centers, other walls, room edges, balcony edges, floor region edges, ceiling zone edges, AND stair footprint edges. Both the wall's center AND its endpoints get snapped, so a wall can run flush against a stair shaft passing through a drop ceiling. Snap proximity is ~1.25 ft.
Partitions clamp to the inner building rectangle (the same W×D as the floor). They do not extend into the shell thickness band; ends that meet another custom wall get a slightly stronger overlap along curved neighbors so T- and L-junctions read solid. When an endpoint locks to another partition (T, L, or end-to-end), a gold ring (and small teal center in plan only) marks the corner; 3D shows a slim accent ring above the deck.
Each stair attaches to a deck (stage / thrust / b-stage / balcony / riser) or passes through a drop ceiling. Geometry is computed from Width, Rise per step (inches), and Tread depth (inches). Step count and total run derive automatically from the deck height.
Use the TO / FROM picker in the Stairs section to add stairs from a chosen start level to a chosen target deck. Start levels can be Main Floor, Balcony, a specific Riser, a Ceiling Zone top, or custom base Z.
Edge dropdown picks which side of the parent the stair connects to: front (DS), back (US), left (SR), right (SL). The deck-side edge sits along the chosen edge.
Rotation (°) rotates the stair freely around its deck-side LEFT corner — that corner stays anchored on the parent edge, the rest of the stair body swings around it. Use the ↺ and ↻ buttons for 90° increments, or type any whole-degree angle. This lets you lay a stair along a wall at any angle. Rotation persists when you nudge the stair within the same edge; only changing parent or edge resets it.
Drag in plan view to re-attach to any nearby deck or ceiling zone — the closest valid edge wins. Walls also act as snap lines: after picking the deck edge, the stair's left, right, or center will snap-align to nearby wall coordinates within 1.25 ft.
Curved-front decks / risers pass their bow shape into stairs attached to that front, so the stair's nose follows the curve.
Offsets + rails: each stair has plan offsets (X/Y) for fine positioning and optional LH/RH handrails. Handrails render in 3D and export to SketchUp.
Opening walls: stairs that cut through balcony/ceiling openings can generate 3-sided guard walls. You can set Opening wall thickness per stair. Main-floor starts intentionally keep top egress open and avoid unnecessary main-floor guard walls.
Snap to riser: use ⇧ SNAP TO RISER to set a stair's start level to the highest riser directly under its base footprint.
For stairs on a riser or drop ceiling, Opp. edge duplicates the run to the opposite side of that platform. Other side (mirror across room width) appears only when the stair is attached to a ceiling zone; use the ceiling zone card's Both sides for paired riser stairs.
A rear balcony spanning a portion of the back wall. Set width, depth, elevation (deck height), and rake (rear elevation if seats are tiered). The balcony renders in plan as a hatched overlay, in section showing the deck and any rake, and in 3D as a flat (or raked) deck.
Balcony stairs can cut true openings in the deck; opening walls around those cutouts follow each stair's orientation and thickness settings, and export with matching geometry.
The balcony is a sightline-blocker: tools/sightlines under the balcony deck check whether the balcony soffit obstructs the view.
Add observer points (sightlines) to verify whether the audience can see specific stage targets (downstage edge, upstage center, etc.). The system traces a line from observer to target and reports whether the balcony soffit, a riser, or any other geometry blocks the view.
Tools include speakers, cameras, lights, and other fixtures. They render in 3D and can be positioned anywhere in the venue. Useful for visualizing FOH/monitor positions and lighting trim.
Beside the view tabs, the green-outlined buttons quickly show or hide major layers in the 3D scene (and rooms where applicable): ROOMS, CEILING (main ceiling shell), CEIL ZONES (drop-ceiling slabs), and ROOF (pitched roof mesh when the roof is enabled in the sidebar). States mirror the detailed toggles under Display in the left panel — use whichever is faster for your workflow.
Stage, Thrust, Wall_N, Room_GreenRoom_Wall_Back, CeilingZone_Drop1_Cap, Stairs_2_stage_front_Step1, etc. Holes in drop ceilings are properly triangulated as polygon-with-holes..json. In the Mac app, the saved file gets your Venue Desinger icon in Finder. Captures every setting, room, wall, stair, etc..json or legacy .vdproj).Autosave runs continuously to your browser's local storage in the background (no manual save button required).
5.5) and step in 0.5 ft increments.🧲 STAGE FRONT, 🧲 WALL R) so you know what you're aligning to.Venue Designer is proprietary software and a licensed property of Wilson Pro AVL. © Wilson Pro AVL. All rights reserved.
The Venue Designer name, logo, user interface, and software (including bundled content) are protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. Unauthorized copying, modification, distribution, public display, rental, or creation of derivative works is prohibited except where Wilson Pro AVL expressly permits in writing.
For licensing, redistribution, or questions about these terms, contact Wilson Pro AVL.
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