Share Layouts
Share your floor plans with your clients. No downloads required. Control permissions and gather feedback without endless emails.
Sharing Features
- Private by default: Every layout that you create is set to private from the start. This means only members of your team have access. Once you toggle to Public, you can now send out the public link, or an email invite to share your layout with others.
Keep an eye out for the Public status badge, anywhere you see your layout preview cards. This lets you quickly see which of your event's layouts are public and which are private.
Good to know: When you send a share link or an invite, your recipient doesn't need to download anything or sign up to an account. They click the link, optionally enter their name, and they can view your floor plan instantly.
Sharing or Exporting?
When you're ready to show your client the floor plan you've been working on, a typical approach would be to export the layout to a PDF or JPEG and send it as an email attachment. You can absolutely still do that with VenueCAD - see our guide on Exporting Layouts for more details.
However, there are many benefits to sharing your layout instead. By using a live link, you can take advantage of the professional collaboration features built into VenueCAD:
- Instant Updates: If you've shared your layout, changes are immediately synced to all users. No need to export another version or send another attachment.
- Feedback Optimised: Gather feedback and streamline your workflow with Comments that are accessible to everyone.
- Fine-grained Sharing Permissions: Control exactly what your client can do. The default sharing options allow users to add comments and take measurements while keeping your design locked. If you want to give them full access to make changes, you can do that too! (We recommend you duplicate your layout first so you have a backup).
- Realtime Editing: Jump on a video call and edit the layout together. You’ll see cursors for everyone accessing the layout in Realtime.
- Optimised for all Devices: You can intuitively zoom and explore the floor plan on your mobile or tablet while on the go.
Public Link
Generate a link, specify permissions and copy the url to give anyone access.
Permissions level -
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Can Edit: Allows full edit access. It is recommended to duplicate the layout and turn off public access so you have a backup.
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Can Comment: Layout contents are locked. This is the default option. User can add comments, check dimensions and review the floor plan without making changes.
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No Access: Public link access is now disabled. Only invited users who click the "View Layout" link in an invite email can gain access.
Layouts access -
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This Layout Only: Guest access is restricted to this single layout.
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All Public Layouts: All public layouts in this event are accessible via the layout name dropdown. Individual layout permissions still apply. This lets users quickly swap back and forth between Version 1, Version 2 etc, all from the same url link.
Top tip: Not sure what your client is going to see when you give them access? Copy the public link to an incognito tab or a separate browser where you're not logged in, and you'll see the guest editor exactly as they will.
Invite By Email
Need more fine grained control? You can generate invites with individual control over permissions. Our in depth video tutorial at the top of this page gives a great overview of how this works.
You can see a list of all invited users and update their access permissions, or remove their access as needed.
At any time if you toggle the blue Public Layout switch, all invites are immediately invalidated and the layout can only be accessed by your team. Toggle it back on and the invites are restored.
Good to know: VenueCAD is built to be realtime by default. When you update permissions, access is updated immediately for everyone. If you make a layout private, anyone viewing that layout externally, who now doesn't have permission, will see an error screen.
Fine grained permissions control
If you've selected "Can Comment" you can further customise which canvas tools are available to your clients when sharing. Each disabled tool is simply removed from the UI of the guest editor.
The tabs at the top let you set the default availability for all new layouts going forward, or you can set for this current layout only.
Share Settings
The Settings tab has some additional options that you can configure :
- Feature Visible on Guest Open - When you send a client a link, you can configure one of the UI panels to show immediately when they load into the floor plan viewer. For example choose "Comments" and the Comments Panel will be visible straight away. This can be helpful to highlight any comments you've added, and make it really clear how they can leave their own comments.