Areas, destinations & icons
Organize points and control exactly what visitors see.
Areas
An area is a place, and a folder. You make one with just a name: there are no type questions to answer. An area holds points, carries one shared color, and can sit inside one other area, one level deep.
An area has no say over what visitors can navigate to. A point appears in the tour's Navigate menu because its own Destination switch is on, and nothing in an area's settings can override that. The All destinations switch on an area header is a shortcut, not a rule: it turns every point in that area on in one press.
Areas live at the top of the Points list in the right panel, above the Travel Points bar that collects everything ungrouped. Make one with ＋ New area above the list, and open any area's settings with the gear on its header row.
Areas
An "area" is exactly what it sounds like: a specific part of the property, like a hotel, a fudge shop, or the ferry dock. You select points on the map and put them in an area, which gives them a shared name and color. This color-coding makes it incredibly easy for a visitor to read the map at a quick glance. Keep in mind that an area doesn't set an icon, just the color.
In this module
This module covers organization. We'll show you how to group points into areas, assign colors, choose icons for points of interest, and decide exactly which points are destinations, the ones the tour names on the map. Color and grouping are how visitors read a map at a glance.
Destinations
A destination is a point visitors care about reaching. Turn a point’s Destination switch on and the tour carries that point’s name on the map beside its pin, and a visitor can be walked to it by name. Leave the switch off and the point is still part of the tour, never named and never offered as somewhere to go.
It changes what a walk says, too. While a visitor is following directions the banner reads Next and the name of the next destination, not the name of every hop in between, so the sidewalk points you laid to join two places stay out of the readout.
A destination draws nothing in the photo itself. No point wears a persistent icon in a tour, travel or destination, and no point name floats over the panorama. Points of interest are the visual layer on the photo, and the guidance disc is what leads visitors from point to point while they walk.
Travel points and the disc
Points that exist for walking, path points, corridors, in-between stops, are not named destinations. They carry no icon and no name in the Navigate menu, and visitors cross them on the round disc navigator that follows the mouse, exactly like Street View. A point becomes a destination only when you turn on the Destination switch on its row in the Points list.
They are not hidden. The last card on Places, under the heading The whole tour, is Every point, with the line Every photo on this tour, nearest first. and a count, and the walking points are in that list. The desk also carries a Browse every point button. The editor says the same thing on the dashed Travel Points bar: they are in the tour, visitors walk or drive through them, they are not listed by name in the Navigate menu.
In the Points list you can tell them apart at a glance: a destination wears a pin in the accent colour, a travel point wears the grey route glyph. Leave the ones that only get somebody from A to B alone, and promote a point to a destination when a visitor would ask for it by name.
Floor tags, the discs you walk on
While a path looks like a line on the map, inside the actual photo it looks like a round disc lying on the ground. We call this a "floor tag," and the editor uses that term everywhere. One floor tag represents one path leaving your current point, and it aims directly at where that path goes. When you (or a visitor) click a floor tag, you walk to the other end. If a path is missing its floor tag, the visitor has nothing to click. You can always use the Points list to filter and find points that are missing tags.
Custom icons
You can upload your own SVG artwork and use it on points of interest. Open Points of Interest in the Build rail, go to the Uploads tab, and press Upload SVG icon. A square SVG works best, and it is scaled for you.
An uploaded icon joins the picker under Yours, alongside the built-in sets, and it is saved with the tour, so it travels wherever the tour goes. Your icons on the Uploads tab lists everything you have added; the × on an icon removes it, and any tag still using it falls back to the info glyph.
Point tags do not take an icon. No point type wears a persistent icon in a tour, so a custom icon can only ever appear on a point of interest.
Pointer
Pointer is the default pick tool, the first of three: Pointer, Box, Lasso. Click a pin on the map to select it, click it again to deselect, and hold Shift to keep adding. Box drags a rectangle over pins, and Lasso traces an area.
The three tools appear wherever you build a selection. Press ＋ New area at the top of the Points list and they sit in the New area pane, above the running list of what you have picked. Open an area's settings with the gear on its header row and they sit in the Points card on the Settings tab instead. Either way the count under them says how many pins you have.
Use Pointer when you want exactly these pins and no others. Switching between the three keeps whatever you have already selected, so you can rough out a run with Box and then add or drop single pins with Pointer.
Box
Box selects every point inside a rectangle you drag on the map. While Box is armed a selection layer covers the map, so a left-drag draws the rectangle instead of panning.
Tap Box, press down over one corner of the area, drag to the opposite corner, and release: every pin inside becomes the selection. Hold Shift when you start the drag to add the rectangle's pins to what you already have instead of replacing it. A drag smaller than about 4 pixels is ignored as a stray click. You can still move around while Box is armed: drag with the right mouse button to pan, and roll the wheel to zoom toward the cursor.
Box is the fastest way to grab a block of neighboring points: a parking lot, one wing of a building, a straight run of walkway. The rectangle follows the screen, not the ground, so for an angled or irregular area switch to Lasso.
Lasso
Lasso selects every point inside a shape you trace. Each click drops a boundary node; an orange dashed outline shows the shape so far, and a second dashed line always previews how the loop will close back to the first node.
Tap Lasso, then click your way around the pins. Close the loop by clicking the ringed first node (within about 16 pixels of it) or by double-clicking anywhere: every pin inside the shape becomes the selection. Hold Shift on the very first click to add the result to your existing selection instead of replacing it. The nodes are anchored to the ground, not the screen, so you can right-drag to pan or wheel-zoom mid-trace and the boundary stays exactly where you drew it.
Use Lasso for irregular areas: a winding path, an angled fence line, or everything around a pond without the pond. Switching to another tool discards an unfinished trace, and Escape clears the selection once points are picked.
Selected count
The small N selected line under the three tool chips is a live readout: the number is exactly how many point pins are currently in the multi-selection, the same set shown as green pins on the map and as rows in the list below.
You never interact with it directly, but read it after every Box or Lasso sweep. If it says 14 and you meant to grab 12, two strangers rode along: skim the selected-points list and remove them before you press Add.
It mirrors the points selected counter in the footer of this menu; both always agree.
Selected points list
Every point currently selected gets a row here with a green dot and its name. This list is the truth of what the buttons below will act on: if a point is not in this list, no action touches it.
Click a row and the map centers on that point's pin, so you can confirm you grabbed the right one. Click the × at the row's right edge to drop just that point from the selection; its pin on the map returns to normal instantly.
Use the list as your audit step before committing. Reading twelve names takes five seconds; pulling a wrong point back out of an area later takes longer. If the names are still raw filenames, that is fine: you can bulk-rename them after grouping with Rename all points in this area.
Reading the selection before you commit
Always check what you grabbed. Below the tools, a list shows every selected point by name. If you grabbed a stray point by mistake, just click the "X" on its row to drop it from the selection without affecting the others. Hit "Clear selection" to empty the bucket and start over.
Remove from selection (×)
The × on a selected-point row removes only that point from the current selection. Nothing about the point itself changes: it stays on the map, keeps its photo and name, and stays in any area it already belongs to.
Click it and the row disappears, the pin reverts from green to its normal color, and both counters drop by one. It is the same operation as clicking the pin again with the Pointer tool, just done from the list.
Use it when a Box or Lasso sweep caught bystanders: neighbors' points across the fence line, or a Street View point you did not mean to move. Trim here, then commit with Add or Create.
Points selected count
The count sits at the top of the actions block at the bottom of the New area pane and reads "0 points selected" until you pick something. It follows every change: pins clicked with Pointer, dragged over with Box, traced with Lasso, shift-clicked on the map, or removed with the × on a row in the list above it.
When it reads 0, Add is dimmed and refuses to run. Pick at least one pin to light it up. Create area is never dimmed, because an area can be made empty and filled whenever you like.
Add to existing area dropdown
This dropdown under Add to existing area lists every area in the tour by name, each with its current member count in parentheses, plus a "Choose an area…" placeholder. It only chooses the target; nothing happens until you press Add beside it.
Select some pins, open the dropdown, pick the area, then press Add. If the tour has no areas yet the whole row is hidden and replaced by a note pointing you at Create new area below.
The member counts are useful context: they update as areas grow, so you can spot at a glance whether your last Add actually landed where you meant it to.
Adding points to an area that already exists
If an area grows, just click "New area," grab the new pins, open the "Add to existing area" dropdown, pick the area, and hit Add. The points instantly take on the area's color. Since a point can only live in one area at a time, it leaves its old area. Note: this doesn't automatically delete the old, empty folder, you'll have to delete that yourself if you don't need it anymore.
Add
Add is the button beside the area dropdown, in the row under Add to existing area at the bottom of the Select Points menu. Choose the area in the dropdown, press Add, and the points you have selected move into it. Press it without choosing one and it says Choose an area first. With nothing selected the button is dimmed and will not take a press, so read the count above it first. If the tour has no areas yet the dropdown and the button are not there at all, and a line says No areas yet · create the first one below.
The points leave whatever area they were in, because a point lives in exactly one area. They inherit the area they land in, so they take its colour and its settings, and the message says so. Names, photos and tags are untouched. The area then opens in the right panel so you can check the result.
An area left empty by the move stays exactly where it is. To merge one area into another, add its points to the bigger area, then press Remove this area on the empty shell yourself. An empty area is never deleted for you.
Create area
Create area turns the current selection into a new area. Type a name in the Area name field at the top of the pane first. Leave it blank and you get "New area", numbered automatically if that name is already taken. The color is the next of ten presets unless you pick one from the Color swatches.
It always works, even with nothing selected, so you can make your folders first and fill them whenever you like. Any points you did have selected are pulled out of the area they were in, since a point lives in one area only.
The new area's settings open in the right panel, on the Settings tab, where you can rename it, change its color, nest it inside another area, and add more points. Name it in visitor-facing words like "Rose Garden": the area name is the heading visitors see over its points in the tour's Navigate menu.
Clear selection
Clear selection empties the multi-selection: every green pin reverts to its normal color, the selected-points list empties, and both counters return to 0. Nothing else changes: no area is touched, no category is written, and the drawer stays open with your current tool still armed.
Press it any time a sweep went wrong and fixing it point by point would be slower than starting over. Pressing Escape does the same thing whenever points are selected.
Clearing before you leave the drawer is good hygiene: the selection does not survive closing the menu anyway, but clearing makes it obvious nothing is pending.
Area rows in the Points list
Your areas live in the Points list in the right panel, each one a header row with its points listed beneath it. The row carries a chevron on the left, the area's color swatch, its name, how many points it holds, and a gear on the right. Sub-areas are indented under their parent.
The chevron collapses and expands the area's points, and collapsing a parent folds its sub-areas in with it. The gear opens that area's settings. Clicking the header body itself reveals the All destinations switch underneath, and clicking again hides it; only one header shows its switch at a time.
An area that holds the point the tour opens at shows a small opening-view mark beside its name, so you can see where the tour starts even with the area collapsed. Everything not in an area collects under the Travel Points bar at the bottom of the list.
What an area is
An area is simply a folder for points belonging to one specific part of a property (like a building or garden). In the Points panel, every area gets a header row showing its color, name, and point count. That color is shared by every point inside the area.
‹ Points
‹ Points closes this area's settings and returns you to the Points list. It is navigation only: nothing is discarded, because every control in this panel saves the moment you change it. There is no Save button to forget.
Use it when you're done, or when you want to hop to another area: back out, then open the other area from its header in the Points list or from the area list.
Name
Name is the area's name everywhere: the area list, the area heading in the Points list, and, when the area is listed as an area, the exact text visitors read in the tour's Navigate menu. The change commits when you finish editing (press Enter or click away). A blank name is replaced with "Area".
Type the new name and move on; the panel header, list rows, and overlays update immediately, and the rename is recorded in the tour history.
Renaming the area does not rename its member points. To restamp the members to match, use Rename all points in this area… below. Recommendation: visitor-facing words, capitalized like a sign: "Rose Garden", "Main Barn", "North Trail".
Area colour swatches
The ten round swatches under Area colour set the area's color. One click applies it instantly: the area's pins on the map, its dots and rows in the editor lists, and the current panorama's tag graphics all repaint on the spot. The active color wears a heavy dark ring.
Just click a swatch; the change saves immediately and is recorded in the history. Nothing else about the area changes.
Color is your wayfinding while authoring: give neighboring areas strongly contrasting colors so a glance at the map tells you where one area ends and the next begins. These are the same ten colors new areas cycle through automatically, so recoloring is mostly for fixing collisions when two adjacent areas landed on similar hues. Need an exact shade instead? Use the Custom chip beside the swatches.
The ten area color swatches
Color is a powerful wayfinding tool. Choose from the ten default swatches. Clicking one instantly repaints every pin and list row associated with that area. Make sure neighboring areas have high-contrast colors so they don't blend together.
Custom colour
The Custom chip shows the area's current color and opens your system's full color picker, for any shade beyond the ten presets.
Click the chip, then work the picker: while you slide, the map overlays repaint live so you can judge the color against the satellite imagery in real time. The final color commits, saves, and lands in the history when you confirm or close the picker.
Use it to match a client's brand color or to distinguish a busy map with more than ten areas. Test the result against the actual terrain: a dark green area can vanish over trees, and pale yellows wash out over concrete.
Picking your own color
If a client has a strict brand color, open the area's settings and click the color wheel at the end of the swatches to open the custom picker. As you slide the picker, the area's pins repaint live on the map, letting you see exactly how the color looks against the physical satellite imagery before you lock it in.
All destinations
All destinations is the switch at the end of an area's own row in the Points list, past the name, the count and the gear. One press turns Destination on for every point in that area; press it again and they all go back to travel points. It reads on only when every point in the area is a destination, so a half-finished area shows it off.
Nothing else is touched. Membership, names, photos and connections stay exactly as they were, and the editor tells you how many points it changed and which area they were in. The change lands in the history, so one undo takes it back.
Reach for it when every point in the area is a place a visitor would ask for by name: rooms in a house, holes on a course, exhibits along a route. Leave it off for connective ground, the sidewalks and hallways between real places, where named points would only crowd the map. For an area that is a mix of both, press Destination on the individual rows instead.
Entrances
Entrances treats the area as one named area entered through specific doors. A checklist of the members appears below the chips: the checked points are the entrances, listed by name in the Navigate menu under the area's heading, and every unchecked member becomes an invisible travel point inside the area. The area itself becomes a Destination.
Tap the chip and StrollPoint pre-checks the area's natural doors for you: the members whose placed tags lead to a point outside the area. If it finds none, it checks the first member so the area is never doorless. Adjust the checkboxes to match reality, and consider the Combine toggle below to collapse all entrances into a single menu entry.
Use Entrances for a courtyard, a building, a fenced garden: anywhere visitors enter through gates rather than beaming to an arbitrary interior point. It keeps the Navigate menu short while the area stays fully walkable inside.
Travel only (retired)
Travel only has been retired along with the other area Navigate modes. It marked a whole area as walking fabric that never appeared in the Navigate menu, and it locked that area's default tag with it. Neither the mode chips nor the default tag row is in an area's settings any more.
An area has no say in destinations now. A point is a destination when the Destination switch on its own row in the Points list is on, and an area of ordinary walking points has that switch off everywhere, which is how every new point arrives. The first time the editor saves a tour that still carries the old area fields it drops them, so they can never be laid back over your own switches.
Nothing needs doing to keep paths out of the menu. Leave their switches alone. Points in no area at all sit under the dashed Travel Points bar in the Points list, which says the same thing in its own words: they are in the tour, visitors walk or drive through them, they are not listed by name in the Navigate menu.
Entrances checklist
This checklist appears only while the area's Navigate mode is Entrances, with one checkbox per member point. Checked means the point is an entrance: listed by name in the Navigate menu under the area heading, and where routes into the area arrive. Unchecked means the point is invisible travel fabric inside the area.
Toggle boxes as needed; every change saves immediately. One rule is enforced: the last checked entrance cannot be unchecked. The editor re-checks it and tells you "At least one entrance must stay checked", because an area with no door is unreachable.
Check only real, physical ways in: gates, doorways, trailheads. The defaults StrollPoint picked (members whose tags lead outside the area) are usually right, but verify after you add or remove points, since the area's doors can change. Fewer entrances reads cleaner in the menu; if any gate is as good as another, add the Combine toggle below.
＋ Add points
Open an area's settings with the gear on its header row and the Pointer, Box and Lasso tools appear right there in the Points card on the Settings tab, with a live count underneath. Pick pins on the map or in the list, then press ＋ Add points at the bottom of the card.
The button stays dimmed until something is selected, and its label counts what you picked, so it reads "＋ Add 6 points" once six pins are chosen. Pressing it is what commits. The points move into this area, leaving any area they were in, since a point lives in exactly one. They take on this area's color, the selection clears, and everything saves.
There is a drag shortcut as well. Drag a pin on the map onto an area's header row in the Points list and it lands in that area. If the pin you drag is part of a multi-selection, the whole selection goes with it.
Adding points from inside the area
You can also add points from inside an area. Open the area's settings, go to the Points card on the Settings tab, lasso your pins on the map, and hit "+ Add 4 points." Pro tip: You can also just click and drag a pin directly from the map onto an area's header row in the Points list to drop it in.
Remove this area
Remove this area deletes the area itself, never its points. Every member stays on the map with its name, photo, and placed tags intact. Remove this areaed points fall back to their own per-point category if they ever had one stamped; otherwise they become invisible walking points, the same state every point starts in.
Press it once: there is no confirmation dialog. The panel returns to the list and the action is recorded in the tour history as "Remove this areaed".
Use it to dissolve a grouping that was wrong from the start. If only one or two points do not belong, do not ungroup: click the × on those member rows instead. Rebuilding after an accidental ungroup means reselecting the points and recreating the area's settings, so read the button before you press it.
Rename all points in this area
Rename all points in this area… renames every member in one pass to a numbered series: "Walkway 1", "Walkway 2", and so on, following the order shown in this panel (point number order). It writes both the editor name and the tour-facing room name together, so the new names appear everywhere: lists, map, tags, and the published tour.
Press it, type the base name in the prompt (it is pre-filled with the area's name), and confirm. The button reports progress as "Renaming 3 / 40" and re-enables when finished, with a toast totaling how many were renamed. Cancel in the prompt aborts with nothing changed; a blank name is refused.
This is the natural second step after creating an area from raw captures: forty filename-titled points become a clean numbered series in seconds. There is no bulk undo for it, so if you need the old names back you run it again with a different base. Pick the base name as visitors should read it.
Rename all and Remove this area
At the bottom of an area's Points card, "Rename all" lets you bulk-rename 50 raw photo files into something clean like "Walkway 1 through 50" in one step. "Remove this area" deletes the folder entirely and drops all the points back into the main list without deleting the photos themselves.
Member point rows
The bottom of the area settings lists every member point, headed by a count of how many the area holds. Each row shows a dot in the area's color, the point's name, and a ×.
Hover a row and its pin lights up on the map; if the pin is off screen, the map glides over to show it and glides back when you move off the row. Click a row to commit: the map centers on the point (zooming in close if you were zoomed out), the pin pulses in answer, and the point's panorama opens in the viewer. Map-only waypoints have no panorama, so they just pulse.
This list is the fastest audit of an area: run your cursor down the rows and watch the pins answer one by one. Anything that lights up outside the area you meant is a stray; remove it with its × right there.
Auditing an area and pulling out strays
To check your work, open an area's settings and go to the Points tab. Slowly hover down the list of members, each pin will light up on the map. If a pin lights up on the wrong side of the property, it's a stray. Click the X on its row to kick it out of the area.
Remove from area (×)
The × on a member row removes that single point from this area. The point itself is untouched: it stays on the map with its name, photo, and tags, falls back to its own per-point category if it ever had one, and otherwise becomes an invisible walking point.
Click it; the row disappears and the change saves immediately. The area stays open even if you remove the last member, showing "No points in this area.", so you can add replacements or ungroup the empty shell.
Use the × for one or two strays that a Box or Lasso sweep dragged in. If most of the area is wrong, Remove this area and reselect is faster than clicking a column of × buttons.
Area map
Area map, under Map in the Build rail, opens titled Area map and lists every area you have. That list is the top level. Click an area to open it and the drawer title changes to that area's own name. An open area owns the map while it is open, showing its pins, its painting and its text, with everything belonging to the other areas out of the way until you go back.
Under Painting, the button reads Start painting while nothing is painted and Open the paint tools once there are shapes. Either one opens the tools and the drawer title reads Painting. Two modes sit at the top: ＋ Add paints an area on, − Erase takes paint off. Four tools sit under them: Paint presses and drags, Box drags a rectangle, Lasso clicks the corners and closes on a double-click, and Free traces an outline you close yourself. Size sets the brush, Colour sets the paint, and Opacity sets how much map shows through. Press Done painting once the shape covers the ground you mean.
Under Pins, Main pin is the first dot this area puts on the tour menu map. It sits at the average of the area's points until you drag it, and Reset the main pin hands it back to the average. + Add a pin adds another. Under Text, + Add new text drops words on the map and Edit on a row opens them with the title reading Edit text. Back to all areas returns you to the list, and everything here saves as you go.
Area map, and what it decides
"Area map" lets you paint colored areas directly onto the map and adjust where the main pin drops. Open it, select an area, and you can add a secondary pin, use the brush tool to paint a colored shape over a building, or stamp text onto the map.
Paint on the map, and why it hides your lines
Painted areas wear a color you chose. They wear the area's own color, or the color you picked while painting. Paint sits above your connection lines, so it can cover them. Drag Opacity down until the lines show through. Ten is nearly clear. Ninety is nearly solid. A brush stroke is stored as a real width on the ground. Zoom in and it widens. Zoom out and it narrows until it reads as a line in that area's color. That is the one time paint gets mistaken for a connection. Paint shows only while Area map is open. Close the drawer and it leaves the editor map. In the tour it shows while that area's folder is open, or while a visitor points at that area.
＋ New area
＋ New area sits at the top of the Points panel, above the area list. Press it and the New area pane opens on the right with a Area name box, a Colour row of ten round swatches, and the point-picking tools under them. Type a name a visitor would say, like Rose Garden, and click a swatch.
Picking points is optional. Press Create new area at the bottom and the area is made with whatever is selected, including nothing at all. An empty area survives: nothing prunes it later, so you can build the folders first and fill them whenever you like. Leave the name blank and the area is called New area, numbered if that name is taken.
The new area's settings open in the same panel, ready for its points. Any points you did select leave whatever area they were in, because a point lives in one area only.
Creating an area
You can create areas before or after you have points. At the top of the Points panel, click "+ New area." Type a clean name, pick one of the ten color swatches, and hit "Create area." It's completely fine to create an empty area and fill it later.
Where the point-picking tools live
The Build rail once carried a row called Select Points. That row and the drawer it opened are retired. The picking tools moved into the right panel, next to the areas they serve.
There are two ways to reach them. Press ＋ New area at the top of the Points panel, or press an area's gear and open the card titled Points. Both carry the same three chips, Pointer, Box and Lasso, and the same live count under them. Opening an area's settings also arms map selection for you.
The count reads 0 selected until you click a pin on the map, then it climbs. That number is how many points your next button press will touch, so read it before you commit. At zero the buttons below it dim and refuse to run.
Select Points, and where the pick tools live
The old "Select Points" tool in the rail is retired. The pick tools now live directly in the right panel when you click "+ New area" or open an area's settings. You have three tools: Lasso, Box, and Pointer. The counter below them tracks exactly how many points you currently have selected.
Inside (nesting an area)
Inside is the third control on the Area card in area settings. It picks the area this one is filed under. Leave it on None · top level to keep the area at the top of the Points list.
Nesting goes one level deep and no further. The picker offers top-level areas only, and an area that already holds sub-areas shows a line saying it stays top level itself. Delete a parent and its children return to the top level rather than being lost.
Nesting is presentation. Routing never reads it. In the Points list the area indents under its parent, and in the tour it shows as a smaller heading inside its parent's section of the Navigate menu. There is no Save button here; the choice commits the moment you make it.
Area settings, the name and nesting
Area settings has two tabs: Settings (for the area itself) and Points (for its members). Under Settings, you can rename the area or use the "Inside" dropdown to nest it under a parent area (like putting "East Bluff Cottages" inside "Harbor Front"). A new name saves when you press Enter or click away, and a pick in Inside saves right away.
Where the area color shows up
Pick an area color once and read where it lands. In the editor it paints the area's pins on the satellite map, and the small square on the area's row in the Points list.
The other three are visitor facing. Press Preview and the same color paints the area's pins on the tour map, the dot on each card in Places, and the dot beside the area's heading in the Navigate menu. A sub-area heading carries its own color inside its parent's section.
That is why color is worth a minute. Judge it against the ground it will sit on, not against the panel: a dark green area disappears over trees and a pale yellow washes out over concrete. Give neighboring areas strongly contrasting colors.
Where the area color goes
That one color shows up in four distinct places: It paints the map pins in the editor, the header square in the Points list, the visitor's live tour map pins, and the swatch next to the name in the visitor's Places menu.
Which color a dot shows
A dot on the editor map wears one color at a time, and the editor picks it in a fixed order. Hovering its row in an area's point list paints it amber. Selecting it paints it green. Opening its photo turns it into a cyan arrow. When none of those apply, it shows the saved color of its area.
Which color a dot actually shows
A map dot can only wear one color at a time, and it follows a strict hierarchy. Hovering over its row in an area's point list makes it amber. Selecting it makes it green. Opening its photo makes it cyan. Underneath all of those temporary UI colors is the permanent saved color of its area.
Path areas
A path area is not a separate kind of area. It is an area whose points all have Destination off. Use one to keep a run of corridor, trail or driveway points tidy: a name, a color, and a folder in the Points list.
Off is the default for every new point, so a path area needs nothing done to it. Its points stay invisible in the finished tour and visitors cross them with the round disc that follows the cursor. In the editor they still show as small rings you can select and edit like any other point.
Older tours carried area modes called Entrances and Travel only, with a checklist of doors. Those are retired. Area settings now holds two cards, Area and Points, and the destination decision lives on each point.
Travel points, path areas and the disc
Most points in a tour aren't destinations; they are the fabric connecting them (hallways, paths). These are called "Travel points." They are kept out of the Navigate menu's destination list, and visitors navigate them seamlessly using the round disc cursor.
Where your areas show up for visitors
Wait for the chip in the editor header to read Saved, press Preview, then open Dash and press the Places card. Your areas are one band on that page, headed Areas here, with a tile for each one.
A tile carries the area's name, how far the nearest point in it is from where the visitor is standing, or Part of this tour when that cannot be worked out, and the number of points in it. Press one and the page takes that area's name and lists the points inside it, with a Back row to come out again. An area with no points in it is left out, and so is a path area and the folder that borrows its points from somewhere else.
There is no nesting and the tiles carry no colour. A sub-area gets a tile of its own only when its parent is not on the page, so plan on one flat row of names. Name your areas the way a visitor would say them and the band needs no explaining.
How areas shape the visitor's menu
Areas are the absolute backbone of the visitor experience. In the live tour, the "Places" menu displays your top-level areas. Tapping an area reveals every point inside it, nearest first. This is why you must name your areas exactly how a visitor would think to search for them.
Add a pin, and Delete this pin
+ Add a pin sits at the foot of the Pins section with an area open in Area map. That section starts with Main pin, the one dot every area already has, which reads Automatic - the average of its points until you drag it and Moved by hand after. Press + Add a pin and another pin lands at the centre of the map with a note reading "Pin added at the centre of the map - drag it into place". It is listed as Pin 2, then Pin 3, and so on.
Click any row to fly the map to that pin, and drag the pin itself to place it. The small bin on an added row is Delete this pin, and it says "Pin deleted". Main pin has no bin, because an area always keeps its first dot; Reset the main pin is what puts that one back.
Add a pin when one name belongs in more than one spot: a park with gates at both ends, a block somebody could walk up to from either street. Everything else wants one dot, so move the Main pin rather than adding to it, or the tour map ends up saying the same name three times.
Text on the area map
Open an area inside Area map and the third section down is Text: words drawn on the map for this area, always on top of the painting. Press + Add new text and one lands at the centre of the map, already open for editing. Every text gets a number out on the map, and the rows under the button carry the same numbers, so clicking a row lights its number up.
A text opens on a page of its own, headed with its number and the name of the area. You type the words in the box, then set Size in feet, the typeface, B for bold, Colour, and Rotate with a slider and a degrees box that mirror each other. Size is ground-true, which is the whole point of it: forty feet of text stays forty feet wide as a visitor zooms, so a street name sits on the street instead of swelling off it. Drag the highlighted text on the map to move it, and everything saves as you go.
Each row carries two small buttons as well. Copy this text clones it whole, the words, size, font, bold, colour and rotation, drops the clone just below the original and opens it for editing, which is how you label eight cabins without setting eight of everything. Delete this text removes that one. Back to the area returns you to the pins, the painting and the text together.
Dash headline
Dash headline is the last card in the Area map drawer, below the list of areas. Two boxes: the title, and a subtitle under it. They are the words at the top of the tour dash, above the list of areas a visitor opens, so they are the first thing anybody reads.
Leave the title empty and the tour uses the tour name, which the box shows you as its placeholder. The subtitle is optional and starts empty, so nothing shows there until you type something. Both boxes save themselves a moment after you stop typing, and both stop at 120 characters.
This is the one piece of writing on the dash that is yours, so spend a minute on it. Say where somebody is and what they can do here, in the words a visitor would use, rather than repeating the tour name twice.
Save area, on a new area
While a new area is still a draft, the foot of its page carries two buttons, Cancel and Save area, with a line above them: Leave the name blank to only stamp the category on the selected points · no area is created. Nothing exists until you press Save area. Cancel leaves every point exactly as it was.
That blank-name rule is worth knowing before you meet it. Press Save area with nothing in the name box and the selected points keep the category you chose, the message tells you the category was set on that many points and no area was created, and there is no area in the list afterwards and no pin on the map. Nothing is broken, but if you were expecting one, go back and give it a name.
With a name, the area is made and the message names it and counts its points. A point belongs to one area at a time, so the points you put in this one come out of the area they were in. A single-point destination works the other way round: its draft says nothing is created without a name, and Save area refuses until you type one, because the name you type is the entry a visitor picks from the menu.
Show this area on the tour map
Show this area on the tour map is the switch under Tour map at the bottom of an area’s own page in the Area map drawer. On, the line beside it reads that its pins are on the tour menu map. Off, it reads Hidden and that its pins are off that map, and the area’s row back in the list wears a HIDDEN chip, so you can see which ones are off without opening any of them.
Switching it off changes nothing you painted and nothing you named. The paint, the text and the main pin stay exactly as you left them, waiting for the switch to come back on. That makes it the right control for an area that is not ready, or one that only matters during an event.
An area the tour reads as a travel path has no switch here at all. Its row carries a MORE PLACES chip instead, and the card says why: the tour lists it under More places with a Map switch of its own that draws every one of its points, and that switch starts off every time somebody opens the tour.