October 2026
October brought exhibition and trade show planning (stands laid out round the hall, sold from the plan, checked against the fire rules and shown in 3D), Create with AI and Hey Metis voice control, wedding and festive décor, export to CAD, and new skies and quick colour edits in 3D.
New features
- Planner Items list sorted A to Z; a picked item is shown and pulsed:
- Planner Clothed trestle table-top stands for wedding and craft fairs:
- Planner Stand artwork uploads, kept with the plan and deleted with it:
- Planner Hey Metis and Create with AI work on exhibition stands:
- Planner Stand look and branding, 24 sample designs, one website switch; uplighters; garden models:
- Planner Event themes for a whole show; dress the hall:
- Planner Stage, sound and rigging library; working effects with switches:
- Planner Richer themes, colour themes, dressing the hall's walls and edges:
- Planner Sponsorship list for a show:
- Planner Sponsorship on the server:
- Planner Better 3D Studio models and a shared library without a release:
- Planner Fold-up sections in the Exhibition Stands panel:
- Planner Tidier Sponsorship window:
- Planner Sponsorship on the exhibitor's stand, and by exhibitor:
- Planner Any number of sponsors per item, 1 to 50:
- Planner Charges — a net list per show that only grows, with exports:
- Planner Sponsorships follow an exhibitor who is renamed:
- Planner A renamed exhibitor's charges move, never charged twice:
- Planner A stand shows its extras, its total and its exhibitor's total:
- Planner The show's own extras and one-off charges on a stand:
- Planner Delivery lists — stand numbers and what each needs, per service:
- Planner Exhibition stands — fill a hall, numbers, prices and status:
- Planner Exhibition footfall, better hall fills, choose what a stand shows:
- Planner Split and merge exhibition stands; footfall ignores gaps behind stands:
- Planner Gap between exhibition stands in the hall fill:
- Planner Free Trade Show Floor Space Calculator:
- Planner Stand availability colours, exhibitor needs, bulk changes:
- Planner Exhibition stand reports — Excel list and printable report:
- Planner Check the floor for exhibition stands:
- Planner Fly Round keeps to the aisles in an exhibition hall:
- Planner Exhibition Stands tab in the Report window:
- Planner Find an exhibitor's stand, with a glowing border:
- Planner Sell stands from Quick adjust; sales, pricing and free-stand finding:
- Planner Select several with a box (Shift+drag, or Select then drag):
- Planner Merge stands into an L (or any joined shape):
- Planner Stand labels word-wrap and size themselves to fit:
- Planner Fire officer approval pack; stands coloured by availability:
- Planner The show's country first; space-only stands with build details:
- Planner Clearer stand pricing, show extras, totals per exhibitor; sample space-only stand in 3D:
- Planner Shell scheme in the space price, a space-only price, and a library of sample stand designs:
- Planner Furniture on exhibition stands:
- Planner Pick sample stand designs from pictures; two-storey tick and design kept in step:
- Planner Stand furniture as the library's own pieces, seats shared round tables; covered roofs; clearer fixed space price:
- Planner Exhibitor and stand-builder contacts, kept out of plans and encrypted:
- Planner Dressed shell scheme; stands use the library's grey swivel stool and real seats:
- Planner Stands straight from an exhibitor's drawing — find, trace, read numbers:
- Planner Read stand numbers off a drawing with AI : BETA
- Planner Website publishing in one button, exhibitions on the website, and the exhibitions batch:
- Planner US fire packs in feet, narrowest exit check, tidier tools, website 3D window:
- Planner Exhibitor registration pages:
- Planner Registrations easy to find — Registrations button, counts, email link:
- Planner Registration page hall in 3D, stand prices, fits phones:
- Planner Choose which stands to hold, see who wants each stand:
- Planner Companies pay organisers online to secure stands (Stripe Connect):
- Planner Registration map shows the whole room; 3D in its own tab; website section:
- Planner Merge venues, renames that stick, did-you-mean on Save as template:
- AI Create with AI BETA — Describe your event in plain words and get a real, editable layout of tables, stage, dance floor and bar to keep or cancel.
- AI Hey Metis voice control BETA — Build layouts, ask questions and walk round the 3D view hands-free by voice, with an optional "Hey Metis" wake word.
- Planner Wedding and festive décor — Wisteria canopies, rose garlands, blossom trees, Christmas trees and lights, red carpets and white furs.
- Planner Export to CAD (DXF) — Plan Tools, Export DXF, gives a CAD drawing of the plan for AutoCAD, BricsCAD, Vectorworks and the like: in millimetres, with walls at their thickness, every table and chair, stands with their numbers and exhibitors, and one layer for each kind of thing.
- Planner Merge venues, and renaming that sticks — When the same venue has been entered twice, Venues & spaces now has Merge into…: its spaces and plans move to the venue you keep. Renaming a venue now renames it on your plans too, and the old name keeps pointing to it, so it can't come back as a second venue. Save as template also suggests the venue you already have when you type a name close to it.
- Planner Registration pages for exhibitors — Give an exhibition its own page and link where companies pick free stands and register their interest. Your logo and colours, a QR code and a button for any website, and if you like a "See the hall in 3D" button with the free stands in green. The stand map shows the whole room as you planned it: carpet, stages, seating, tables, the café and the doors. Prices show on free stands when you tick Show prices, and on a phone the whole hall fits the screen. Registrations come to you by email with a link straight to the show, and a Registrations button at the top of the planner counts the new ones across all your shows. Tick the stands to hold for a company, or click a stand on the plan to see every company that asked for it and hold it for one of them. Nothing is reserved until you do.
- 3D & 360 Stand names no longer stretched — In 3D, the exhibitor's name on a sample space-only stand and round its banner tower keeps its proper letter shapes, however long or short the board.
- Planner Narrowest fire exit check — The fire officer pack now checks every fire exit is wide enough on its own, not just all the exits together: 1.05 m in the UK, 32 in in the US, 1.20 m in Germany, and changeable to the venue's own. A door that is too narrow is named in the checks and shown in red on the plan.
- Planner US fire packs in feet — Choose United States for an exhibition's fire rules and the figures, checks and fire officer pack are in feet, square feet and inches: 10 ft aisles, 200 ft to an exit, 15 sq ft a person. Stand sizes, the stand list and prices switch to square feet too, with the price per square foot worked out so every stand costs the same. Other countries stay in metres.
- 3D & 360 Website 3D in its own window — Visitors to your website can open the 3D view in its own window with Open in a new window, so they get the whole screen. It shows the same guest count and layout they picked. The Close button, which did nothing there, is gone from the website 3D view.
- Planner Tidier drawing tools — The drawing tools now sit in three even rows, and the column buttons are called Round pillar and Square pillar.
- 3D & 360 360 tour link only when there is a 360 — In Collaboration, the 360 tour link now only appears for plans with 360 photos. Other plans just get the review link.
- Planner One button for your website — The Website button beside Save puts the plan on your website, or takes it off, straight away. Any plan can go on, a template or an event plan. Profile, Website Widget now lists only what is on your website. Visitors never see guest names, notes, orders or change history.
- Planner Exhibitions on your website — Put a show's plan on your website and visitors see every stand free, reserved or sold, with exhibitor names on sold stands and, if you choose, prices on free ones. It updates each time you save. Visitors click a free stand to enquire, and the enquiry arrives with the stand number.
- Planner Footfall stands out — With footfall showing, the floors and any drawing behind the plan fade back, so the busy and quiet routes are easy to read.
- Planner Copy a show for next year — One button makes next year's plan of a show: the hall, every stand with its number and size, the prices and settings, with every stand free again and no exhibitors or stand builders. Last year's exhibitor can be noted on each stand to offer it back first, and merged or space-only stands can go back to standard.
- Planner Getting round a big plan, even on a laptop — A map of the whole plan sits in the corner once you zoom in: drag the outlined box, or click anywhere, to go there, with big zoom, Whole plan and Selected buttons beside it; drag it to whichever corner suits you. Hold Space and drag to move round from anywhere, even over stands, swipe with two fingers on a trackpad, and use + and − to zoom.
- Planner Booked stands are safe from slips — Freeing a sold or reserved stand, changing a booked stand's price, or changing or taking off a stand's exhibitor now asks in a proper box and wants a reason; a stand's exhibitor name can only be changed with Change…. Every change of status, price, exhibitor or lock is kept on the stand with who, when and why, shown on the stand's card and in its details. Clicking a locked stand now selects the stand, not the floor under it.
- Planner Library search sections — When a search opens several library sections, closing one leaves the others open.
- Planner Fill a hall with exhibition stands — Auto Layout fills a room, or an area you drag out, with stands and aisles around pillars and fire exits, with the best few options to swap between. Stands come numbered, with their open sides, exhibitor, status and price, and 15 new stands include US sizes, islands, space-only plots and a table-top stand.
- Planner Check an exhibition floor — One button lists every problem with the stands: clashes, stands on pillars or in front of fire exits, aisles too narrow, missing or repeated numbers, sold stands with no exhibitor and stands nobody can reach. Click one to go to it.
- Planner Turnstile entrances — A bank of tripod turnstiles in the Library: drag it wider and it adds a turnstile for every 90 cm. Footfall takes it as the way visitors come in.
- Planner Industrial ceiling with matching lights — A new ceiling style for exhibition halls and warehouses: dark soffit, steels, spiral aluminium ducts with drop vents, cable tray and sprinkler mains, lit by aluminium high-bay pendants.
- Planner Drag past the edge of the screen — Stretching or moving something to the edge of the plan now scrolls it, so a video wall, a wall or a run of turnstiles can go as long as you need.
- Planner Stands stop at their neighbours — Making a stand bigger, by dragging or typing, stops where it meets the stand behind or beside it. A typed size grows away from the blocked side instead.
- Planner Aisle check is for walkways only — Check the floor no longer reads the hairline gaps between neighbouring stands as aisles, or measures across a stand in between, so the aisle rule (3 m in the UAE) flags real walkways only. Carpet laid over the hall no longer stops footfall working.
- Planner Video walls that play — The LED video wall keeps its thickness: set its width and its height. In 3D it plays the Metis Room Planner advert, or shows the logo, or can be switched off.
- Planner Arrows for the way round, the way in and the way out — A new Arrow tool beside Wall: drag from tail to point, or click for a ready-made one. Direction of travel, Entrance, Exit or Two-way, from small to huge, pointed with up, down, left, right and diagonal buttons or any angle you type, at any length, with your own words beside it. They are painted on the floor in 3D.
- Planner Stands against the hall wall — A stand less than 1.5 m from a wall counts as backing onto it — nobody walks down that gap — so a row along the hall wall is no longer priced as corner stands.
- Planner Corner posts on every shell stand — Stands placed from a drawing or drawn as an outline now stand on aluminium corner posts in 3D, so a peninsula or island stand's fascia is held up like the real thing.
- Planner Walls join anywhere along another wall — A wall end now snaps onto the side of another wall, straight or curved, so T junctions and walls meeting a curve join first time. Rooms follow curved walls round their curve. Footfall finds the hall by itself: the room with the stands in it, or the walls' outer edge when they do not close.
- Planner Narrow aisles shown on the plan — Check the floor now marks every aisle narrower than your minimum in red on the plan. Click one in the list to pick it out with its width.
- Planner Grand entrances and archways as fire exits — Select a grand entrance or carriage archway and tick Fire exit: it gets its EXIT badge and counts as an exit in the floor checks and the fire officer pack.
- Planner Café stools and 2ft round tables — A backless Café Stool joins the chair types — small in plan and in 3D, for cafés, canteens and breakout areas — and a 2ft (Ø60) round table for two.
- Planner Number stands by clicking — Set a row letter, a first number and a step, then click the stands in turn — the stands go see-through so the drawing's numbers show. Type a number to break the pattern and the count carries on from there. Tracing a stand now reads its number off the drawing as you go.
- Planner Bend walls by hand — Select a wall and drag the handle in its middle: it curves through the pointer, either side, and goes straight again on the line. Press F while drawing a curved wall to bow it the other way, or use Flip curve on one already drawn. Undo now takes back one wall at a time.
- Planner Import AVIF, WebP and other pictures — Floorplans saved as AVIF, WebP, GIF, BMP or a Windows .jfif photo now import like a PNG, and a failed import always says why.
- Planner Carriage archways and grand entrances — Two new openings in the door library (Structural): a round-topped carriage archway, like the horse-and-cart arches of old coaching inns, and a square grand entrance for malls and hotels. Drag one onto a wall and stretch it to any width; in 3D it stands as tall as it is wide, in stone, and flattens to fit if the wall is lower.
- Planner Stands straight from an exhibitor's drawing — Import the organiser's floorplan and set its scale, then drag round the hall: every stand drawn as a box is placed at its size and numbered, in seconds. Trace stands snaps any it missed to the drawing's lines, one drag each, and the stand numbers printed on the drawing can be read straight off it — on your computer for a clear drawing, or with AI (beta) for a small or blurred one. Stands it cannot read are left blank, never given a made-up number.
- Planner Drop a floorplan on the import box — When you import an existing floorplan you can now drag the PDF, SVG, PNG or JPG straight onto the box, as well as choosing it. A file dropped anywhere else in the planner is ignored instead of opening in the browser.
- Planner Exhibitor and stand-builder contacts, kept safely — Keep the people at each exhibitor and stand builder (name, role, email, phone) with the plan's stands. They are encrypted on our servers and never stored in the plan, deleted automatically after the event, and each can be marked for future events. Owners can download a future-events list, answer a request to see or delete someone's details, set how long contacts are kept and see who did what.
- Planner Furniture on exhibition stands — Give any stand its hired chairs, tables, poseur tables, bar stools, brochure racks and counters. They are the library's own furniture in 2D and 3D, with the seats shared evenly round their tables (8 stools at 4 poseur tables is 2 each), and charged at your furniture hire prices. Covered space-only stands get a roof.
- Planner Clearer stand pricing, extras and totals per exhibitor — Set one space price per m², shell scheme included, with its own price for space only, and every stand shows its price. Premium positions add for corners, islands and busy footfall. A price list for what the show supplies (power, water, internet, rigging) is charged to the stands that ask, and the Report shows what each exhibitor owes. Space-only stands show one of eight sample stand designs in 2D and 3D, from a pop-up to a two-storey stand, until the exhibitor's own design is in, picked from pictures like floors. Shell-scheme stands can be dressed: full-height graphics, a branded counter, a screen, a brochure rack and carpet.
- Planner Space-only stands and the show's country — Set the country the show is in before laying out stands: the aisles and fire checks follow its rules, wherever you are based. Any stand can be switched to space only, with the stand builder, build height, covered or two-storey, and design approval, shown in 3D as the space they may build in.
- Planner Fire officer approval pack — One click prints the pack to send for fire approval: exits and their widths, aisle widths, the walk from every stand to the nearest fire exit, how many people the hall takes, the stand list and sign-off boxes. Starting figures for the UK, France, Spain, Germany, the USA and the UAE, each changeable to the venue's own.
- Planner Exhibition stand reports — Download every stand to Excel, or print a stand report with the totals, the plan in availability colours, the stand list and what the build crew must supply: power, water, internet, rigging and furniture.
- Planner Stand availability at a glance, exhibitor needs and bulk changes — Stands show their availability in colour from the start, or colour them by type, tag, price, power or footfall, with a key; a name on a stand books it. Record each exhibitor's power, water, internet and rigging, and change the status, power or tags of many stands at once.
- Planner Free trade show floor space calculator — A new free calculator works out how big a hall an exhibition needs from its stands, visitors, registration, catering, seminar theatre and step-free access, then lays the whole show out to scale to prove it fits.
- Planner Split and merge exhibition stands — Split a stand in two, three or four, or at a set width, and merge touching stands into one bigger stand, with numbers, exhibitors and status carried over. A merged stand can be split back into the stands it was made from.
- Planner Footfall for every exhibition stand — A heat map shows where visitors walk between the doors, the stands, the bar and the stage, which stands will be quiet, and how busy each one is. Filling a hall now offers a balanced layout, the most stands, or the best footfall for every stand.
Enhancements
- Planner L-shaped exhibition stands — Merge stands that make an L, T or other shape into one stand, with walls where it backs onto its neighbours and the fascia along every aisle, in 2D and 3D. Un-merge splits it back. Stands can also be coloured by tag.
- Planner Select several with a box — Hold Shift and drag, or press Select and drag, to pick up everything inside a box — then delete, move, align or change them together. Shift-click still adds one item at a time.
- Planner Sell stands from Quick adjust — Click a stand to mark it free, held, reserved, sold or blocked, type the exhibitor and see its price worked out. Select several to see their totals and set them all at once. Exhibition Stands now shows what is sold, booked and still free with its value, explains how prices are worked out, and finds free stands by type, size and price.
- Planner Find an exhibitor's stand — Type a company, stand number or reference in Exhibition Stands to light up their stands with a glowing border and go straight to them. Stand reports now sit in the Report window too.
- 3D & 360 Fly Round walks the aisles of an exhibition — In a hall of stands the 3D Fly Round walks up and down the aisles, row by row, instead of passing through the stands.
- 3D & 360 Skies, shadows and quick edits — New skies including sunset and stormy rain, shadows that follow the weather, and quick colour edits for cloths and chairs in 3D.
- Planner Rustic DJ booth ready for your decks — The rustic LOVE DJ booth now has a bare plank top, so the real DJ decks you place on it are the only gear on show.
Bugs fixed
- Account & security Security hardening — Security hardening across sign-in and uploads.