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Playing Surfaces

Choose from built-in sports surfaces or create custom ones for your drill diagrams.

2 min readUpdated Apr 17, 2026

Every canvas diagram sits on top of a playing surface. Planner.coach includes a library of built-in surfaces and lets you create custom ones for any sport or facility.

Built-in surfaces

The following surfaces are available out of the box:

  • Hockey / Inline Hockey -- full rink and half rink
  • Soccer / Football -- full pitch
  • Basketball -- full court
  • American Football -- full field
  • Baseball / Softball -- diamond
  • Volleyball -- full court
  • Rugby -- full pitch
  • Lacrosse -- full field
  • Generic -- a plain pitch with boundary lines, suitable for multi-sport or fitness drills

Select a surface from the Surface dropdown at the top of the canvas editor. The dropdown filters based on the sport assigned to the activity, but you can view all surfaces by clearing the filter.

Some sports share surfaces. Inline hockey uses the same rink diagrams as ice hockey, so all full-rink and half-rink surfaces are available for inline hockey activities.

Custom surfaces

If your sport or facility is not covered by the built-in options, create a custom surface from a photo or diagram of your actual playing area.

Create a custom surface

  1. Go to Settings > Custom Surfaces and click New Surface.
  2. Upload an image of your playing area (PNG or JPG). This could be a photo of your gym floor, a diagram of your training facility, or a screenshot from another tool.
  3. Set the real-world dimensions so that objects on the canvas scale correctly.
  4. Give it a name and save.

Your custom surface appears in the Surface dropdown alongside the built-in options and is available across all your activities.

When to use custom surfaces

Custom surfaces are useful for:

  • Non-standard facilities -- Indoor training spaces, multi-purpose gyms, or outdoor areas that don't match a regulation field.
  • Niche sports -- If your sport isn't in the built-in list, upload your own court or field diagram.
  • Facility-specific diagrams -- Create a surface that matches the exact layout of your home venue, including markings, boundaries, and landmarks your athletes already know.

There's no limit on how many custom surfaces you can create.

Selecting a surface

When you open the canvas editor on a new activity, the surface defaults to the most common option for your selected sport. To change it, open the Surface dropdown and pick a different one. Switching surfaces repositions the background but keeps all placed objects intact.

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