Building a theatre house — sections, rows and house numbering

A playhouse is not banquet furniture. Instead of dragging thirty chair rows, drop ONE "Theatre section" from the Layout tab palette and describe the house.

Adding a section:
1. Layout tab -> palette -> "Theatre section"
2. Name it. The name is what the seat's price zone keys off, so use the name the box office uses: Orchestra, Mezzanine, Balcony, Left Box
3. Set rows and seats per row
4. Pick a seat numbering convention (below), then "Add section"

The section draws itself on the plan straight away, so you see the house before you sell a ticket.

Seat numbering — two conventions:
• House numbering (the default) — the two center seats are 1 and 2 and the numbers grow outward, so seat 1 is always on the center aisle. A row of eight reads 8 6 4 2 | 1 3 5 7. You choose which side of center carries the odd numbers.
• Continental — a straight 1 to N, left to right.

Row lettering:
Rows letter A, B, C and skip I and O, because on a printed ticket those read as 1 and 0. That skip is on by default and can be turned off. Past Z the rows double: AA, BB, CC.

Rows that are not all the same:
A raked house narrows toward the stage. Open the section in the right-hand panel and give any row its own seat count. Row A can hold 14 while row H holds 22, and nothing else in the house moves.

Marking individual seats:
Open a row in the panel to see its seats, choose what a tap marks (Wheelchair, Companion, Aisle, or Blocked), and tap the seats. Only the seats you tap change — a house has a handful of accessible positions, not a whole overlay's worth. Blocked seats (an obstructed view, the sound desk) are drawn on the map but can never be bought, so a patron sees why there is a gap.

Aisles and geometry:
Give the aisle positions as seat numbers counted from the left ("10, 20") and the section opens a real gap there without renumbering anything. Seat width and row depth are in feet, and the drawn rectangle always resizes to match the seats inside it.

Selling the house:
The section arrives already marked sellable. Set the per-seat price in the panel, then click "Materialize seats" in the toolbar. Every seat becomes an addressable unit labelled the way the ticket reads ("Row F, Seat 12"), and the /events/:eventId/pick-seats page shows the house to buyers.

Changing a house that already has subscribers:
Renaming rows, switching numbering conventions, moving the section, changing seat width, adding accessible marks, trimming a row's seat count, and adding rows on the end are all safe: every existing seat keeps its identity, so a season subscriber's retained seats still point at the same chairs. If you shrink a section, re-running "Materialize seats" clears the unsold seats it no longer has and TELLS YOU about any sold seat that fell off the map rather than deleting it quietly.

Several sections, one house:
Add one section per price area. Orchestra, Mezzanine and Balcony are three sections, which is what lets the box-office price matrix charge them differently.