A Gallery Space is a digital model of a real room in your venue — its outline, its walls, and the fixed features that get in the way of hanging art (doors, columns, display cases). Once a space exists, you can plan exactly where each artwork goes on each wall before you ever pick up a hammer.
This article covers how to create and model a space, including the fastest way to do it: uploading a floor plan and letting Frida build the space for you. For the next step — actually placing artworks on the walls — see Exhibition Gallery Layout & Wall Placement.
Controlled rollout: multi-room Gallery Spaces V3. Multi-room planning is implemented and being enabled selectively. Access can vary by organization. The generally available space and wall-planning workflow described below remains the safe baseline; sections that mention several rooms apply only when multi-room access is enabled.
Not the same as space rentals. Gallery Spaces are about planning art installation in your own rooms. If you're looking to lease a studio or gallery to an occupant with a signed agreement and monthly rent, that's a different module — see Managing Rental Spaces & Agreements.
Where to Find It
Gallery Spaces lives under Exhibitions & Events → Gallery Spaces in the admin sidebar, at /admin/gallery-spaces.
It's part of the Exhibition toolset, so a few things have to line up for it to appear:
Your plan includes Exhibition Sales & Management (the Exhibition tools feature). If you don't see Gallery Spaces in the sidebar, your plan may not include it yet — contact support or check your plan.
Your role has programming access. Owners and admins always do; a member with a narrower scoped role may not.
The Gallery Spaces page lists every space you've created, with its wall count, dimensions, and whether it's currently attached to an exhibition (shown as Available or tagged with the exhibition's name).
A Few Conventions Worth Knowing
Everything is stored in centimeters. Internally, every dimension and coordinate is in cm. The manual create form lets you type in feet for convenience and converts for you, and the list view shows both units (e.g. 9.8 ft (300 cm)).
Coordinates start at the top-left. On a floor plan, X increases to the and Y increases — the same way you'd read a printed plan. You rarely need to think about this, but it's why imported plans line up the way they do.
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A space is made of "wall runs." Each wall run is one continuous display surface (it can bend around corners as connected segments). Walls are hangable by default, so they're ready to receive artwork. Fixed obstructions — doors, columns — and free-standing display cases or vitrines are modeled separately so your layout stays realistic.
Geometry has honest levels of trust. A space's measurements carry a fidelity state, and the planner shows it wherever scale matters:
Sketch — dimensions were inferred (from a scan or quick entry) and haven't been checked against the room. Fine for early exploration; visibly not installation-ready.
Calibrated — the floor-plan image has a valid real-world scale (you marked a known distance on it), but the geometry hasn't been site-verified.
Verified — an owner or admin confirmed the measurements match the physical room. Only verified geometry backs an approved installation plan, and a verified version never changes — edits create a new draft version instead.
Three Ways to Create a Space
When you open Gallery Spaces, you'll see a few options. Pick the one that matches what you have on hand.
1. Quick Room (fastest for simple rooms)
Click Quick Room for a short, guided wizard:
Shape — choose a room shape (rectangle and common variations).
Dimensions — enter the room's size.
Name — give it a name (e.g. "Main Gallery") and create.
The wizard automatically generates the walls for that shape, so a plain rectangular room is ready to hang in well under a minute. A single-wall room drops you straight onto the wall editor; a multi-wall room lands on the space overview.
2. Custom (Draw Floor Plan)
Click Custom (Draw Floor Plan) when you want full control. You'll first enter the basics:
Space name (required) — e.g. "Project Room"
Description (optional) — notes about lighting, flooring, or features
Room dimensions (optional) — length, width, and ceiling height, in feet
After creating the space, open it to draw and refine its walls in the floor-plan editor, then Manage Walls to set up each display surface.
3. Scan a Floor Plan (let Frida read it)
If you already have a floor plan — a phone photo, a scan, or an architect's PDF — click Scan floor plan and let Frida read it into a reviewable draft. This is the floor-plan intake described next.
Building a Space from a Floor Plan
Frida, your built-in assistant, can read a floor-plan image or PDF into a draft Gallery Space — outline, walls, doors, and columns — that you review and confirm before anything real is created.
How it works
Start a scan. On the Gallery Spaces page, click Scan floor plan and upload your plan — an image or PDF. A clear phone photo of a printed plan works; so does an architect's PDF. For a multi-page PDF, you pick the page with the room you want — the first page is never assumed.
The plan is read into a draft. Frida studies the plan: she finds the room outline, traces each wall (carrying over any wall letters or labels printed on the plan), spots doors and columns, and reads the dimensions, converting feet-and-inches to centimeters. Anything she can't read stays unknown — a missing measurement is never invented.
You review the draft. The review page shows the extracted geometry drawn over your original plan, with a list of anything uncertain, unknown, or invalid. Correct it there with exact numbers, or tell Frida what to change in chat ("the east wall is 4 m, not 3") — every correction updates the same draft, and changes are highlighted so you can see exactly what moved.
You confirm, and the space is created. Confirmation is a deliberate action on the review page. It creates the Gallery Space with the exact geometry you reviewed — the server rejects a confirmation if the draft changed underneath you or still has blocking problems.
The plan stays attached — privately. Your uploaded floor plan is stored privately with the space (it never appears in public or shared views), and you land in the floor-plan editor to calibrate, fine-tune, and start placing artwork.
Good to know
Nothing is created without your confirmation. Frida can propose and correct drafts, but only your explicit confirmation on the review page creates a space — the server enforces this, not just the assistant.
Editing needs exhibition-management access. Scanning and correcting drafts requires organization owner/admin access or the exhibition-management role; verifying measurements as installation-grade is owner/admin only.
Treat the result as a sketch until verified. Extraction is good, but floor plans vary. The new space starts in Sketch (or Calibrated, if a scale was read) — check wall lengths and features against the real room, then verify the geometry before relying on it for installation.
One room at a time works best. If a building has several rooms on one sheet, scan them one room at a time so each becomes its own space; on a multi-page PDF, pick the right page for each.
Connecting a Space to an Exhibition
A Gallery Space is a reusable asset — the same room can serve show after show. Assigning a space to an exhibition pins the exact version of its measurements that show plans against, so a later re-measure never silently changes a plan you've already built. When a space is committed to a show, the list view shows the exhibition's name instead of Available.
With multi-room Gallery Spaces V3 enabled in controlled rollout, an exhibition can use several rooms in a shared layout plan. Do not assume this option is available to every organization.
From Space to Hung Show
Modeling the space is step one. Once your walls exist, the real payoff is placing artwork:
Open a space and Manage Walls to review each display surface.
Use the wall placement tools to position each piece, set heights, and visualize spacing before installation.
The full hanging workflow — coordinates, heights, balancing visual weight, and sharing the plan with your install team — is covered in Exhibition Gallery Layout & Wall Placement.
Troubleshooting
I don't see Gallery Spaces in the sidebar.
It lives under Exhibitions & Events. If the whole section is missing, your plan may not include Exhibition Sales & Management, or your role may not have programming access. Contact an organization owner or support.
Frida didn't pick up a wall (or got a dimension wrong).
Floor plans vary in quality. Fix it on the draft review page with exact numbers, or tell Frida what to change in chat before you confirm — "add the back wall, it's 6 m." A sharper, well-lit photo also helps the extraction.
Nothing was created after I uploaded my plan.
That's the design: the scan produces a draft, and only your confirmation on the review page creates the space. Open the draft, resolve anything the review list flags as blocking, and confirm. Abandoned drafts are cleaned up automatically after 30 days.
My dimensions look off by a lot.
Check the unit. The manual create form expects feet; the list view shows both feet and centimeters. If a number is far from reality, you likely entered cm where feet were expected (or vice versa). If the tracing image looks the wrong size, recalibrate it — mark a known distance on the image and the whole plan rescales.
Can I delete a space?
Archiving is preferred — it keeps the room's history and can be reversed. Deleting a space removes its walls and features permanently; any artwork placements that pointed at those walls aren't destroyed, but they lose their surface and land in the layout's resolution queue for you to re-place. A space that backs an approved installation plan should be archived, not deleted.
