User guide

Everything Hooplan does, in one page. The pictures below are drawn live by the same engine that powers the app, so they always match how your courses behave.

What is Hooplan?

Hooplan is a design tool for Hoopers dog agility courses. You lay out the equipment; Hooplan computes the dog’s running line, checks the course against the rulebook and judging guidelines, and helps you place the judge. Courses live in your account, sync between devices, and can be printed as a judge sheet or shared with a link. Hooplan validates against the BK9 and CHUK (Canine Hoopers UK) rulebooks — pick the organisation in the designer header and the levels, classes and checks follow. If you judge or train under different rules, we’d love to hear from you via Want to see your rules in Hooplan? in the library footer.

Your course library

The library is the home screen. From here you can:

• + New course — start from a blank ring. Or scroll to Start from a template: the sample serpentine, plus a dropdown per organisation with every class and level. Each level’s template builds on the one before — except BK9 Championship, which is its own wider-spaced course in a 40 × 40 m ring, built for the 8–10 m gaps that level expects.
• Import — bring in courses from other design tools (see Importing).
• Folders — group courses (New folder, or Move on a card). To nest folders, open one and create a new folder inside it. Renaming a folder moves everything inside it.
• Tags — free-form labels edited on each card, e.g. a venue or a show date. Use Filter to narrow the library by class, level or tag.
• On each card: open, Duplicate, Move, Delete, plus quick Print and Share.

Tags and folders are personal organisation — they never travel with a shared course.

Designing a course

Open a course to enter the designer. Pick equipment from the Equipment rail to add it at the centre of your view, then drag it into place — the running line and all checks update as you move things. The equipment on offer follows the class: Hoopers classes use hoops only; BK9 Allsorts (and CHUK Touch N Go) open up the rest, and CHUK Barrellers/Tunnellers carry their own palettes and performance-balance rules.

• Header controls — course title, organisation (BK9 or CHUK — switching re-checks the course against that rulebook, clamps the level to its ladder, maps a class the other organisation doesn’t run to its open class, and gives a CHUK course the Extra it needs), class type, level (K1 up to Championship, or Starters up to Masters), Undo/Redo, Print and Share.
• Ring size — edit the width × height fields; the layout rescales uniformly so the line keeps its shape, and any gaps pushed outside the legal band get flagged rather than silently stretched.
• ⇄ Reverse — run the same course in the opposite direction.
• ⇋ Mirror / ⇅ Flip — reflect the course into its left–right mirror image, or turn it upside down. The running order stays the same; every position, rotation, K line, DHA, CHUK Extra and the judge reflect with it.
• Right-click (desktop) an obstacle for its actions: Run again (visit it a second time — one tap adds it after the last obstacle, or pick which route number the repeat runs as from the as №… list; slots right next to an existing visit aren't offered, since a back-to-back repeat leaves no gap to run), Remove last visit, Swap line side (which way the dog rounds a barrel — a barrel the route passes more than once gets one button per visit, №2, №4 and so on, so each pass can round it its own way; a highlighted number is a pass you have moved off the side the app picked), Change to… (Allsorts), Delete. Right-click the running line to insert an obstacle at that point on the route. On the phone, select an obstacle and the same actions appear as buttons.
• Fine positioning — arrow keys nudge the selected obstacle by 0.1 m; rotation is ±15° per tap on the phone, or drag-based on desktop. Obstacles are auto-rotated to face the line as you place them.

Draw mode

Instead of placing hoops one by one, switch the toolbar from Select to ✏ Draw line and sketch the running line you want. Hooplan fills the stroke with hoops at legal, even spacing inside your level’s gap window (5–8 m for most BK9 levels, 8–10 m at Championship, 6–10 m under CHUK) — aiming for the middle at K1–K4 and spacing wider at higher levels — each rotated to follow your line. Hoops already on the course are reused, not duplicated: pass the stroke over one (a soft ring highlights it while you draw, with a ×2 badge when the stroke passes it more than once) and it joins the route again at that point — loop back through the same hoops and they become repeat visits, with no new equipment. That includes hoops the stroke itself just placed: draw a circle twice in one go and the first lap lays the hoops, the second lap runs them again.

The running line & validation

The dashed line is the dog’s computed path through the route — a flowing spline, not straight lines between obstacles. The Validation panel checks the course against your organisation’s rulebook for the selected level: obstacle counts, gap distances, entry/exit angles, room at the ring boundary, obstacles tempting a wrong course, and more. Gap distances follow the dog’s actual curved path rather than straight lines between obstacles, and so do wrong-course temptations — a trap sits where the dog is carried, not where a straight chord points. Angles are measured face to face: the line from an obstacle’s exit face to the next one’s entry face, no more than 45° off either. That’s the rulebook’s own diagram — each neighbour sits in the other’s wedge or it doesn’t, which is what the Helper shows you — and because obstacles are auto-rotated to bisect the turn it works out at roughly a right-angle change of direction being the most a course should ask for. Only the obstacle whose own face is out of line is flagged, not its neighbours. A tunnel is held tighter still on the approach, since it wants a straight run in.

• ✓ passes, ✕ breaks a rule, ⚠ goes against a judging guideline.
• Helper (beside Colour — the ring toolbar on desktop, the header on the phone) opens a panel that shades the allowance onto the plan: Off, Selected for whichever obstacle you have selected (select another and it follows), or All to see the whole course’s angles at once. On Selected you also get the wedge from the obstacle BEFORE it, at half strength — that’s the allowance the selected obstacle has to sit inside, so you can see both sides of the gap you’re placing into. Ahead of an obstacle, a pale green wedge spanning the widest departure the rules permit and running from your level’s shortest legal gap out to its longest: it’s the area the next obstacle can go in — put it inside and both the angle and the distance pass; out to the side is the amber angle warning, and the hollow near end — dashed back to the obstacle so you can see the whole wedge — is ground that’s simply too close. Behind it, two violet dashed lines at the same rulebook angle show the approach the obstacle will accept: the one before it wants to sit between them. Both stay put as you move things, so you can place against them. Barrels and gates get neither, being passed beside rather than run through, and a tunnel’s approach lines close right in, since it wants a straight run in. The same panel recolours either side and makes it as bold or as faint as you like — useful if the default green disappears into your ring colour. It’s a display setting like the ring colour — off by default, remembered per browser, and never part of the course, a share or a print.
• Click a failing check to select the obstacle it flags. A flagged obstacle offers Fix — top of the right-click menu on desktop, first button in the action bar on the phone — a one-tap rotate, move or type change the engine has verified clears the check without breaking anything else. It works on amber guideline warnings too: a corner too sharp for any rotation slides outward to buy the turn more room, and an obstacle presenting a wrong-course choice steps out of the temptation cone. When no such change exists, the button says so and the adjustment is yours to make.
• Gap distances are measured along the spline and labelled on the course; gaps outside your level’s window are highlighted — 5–8 m at most BK9 levels, 8–10 m at Championship, 6–10 m under CHUK.
• For spacing beyond the route, select an obstacle and switch on Nearby distances (the Nearby chip on the phone): dashed grey lines show straight-line metres to every obstacle within 10 m — these are centre-to-centre, not along the running line like the gap labels.
• Course info shows running-line length and obstacle count, and the equipment manifest totals what you need to build the course.

K lines & distance handling areas

From K5 upward, BK9 courses carry distance-handling aids. A K line is a boundary the handler must stay behind; a DHA (distance handling area) is a rectangle the handler works from. (CHUK’s distance work is the DHB — see CHUK extras.)

• At K5 and K6 each class chooses K line or DHA in the K5/K6 handling aids panel; higher levels use rectangular DHAs per class.
• DHAs resize from 2 to 8 m per side (Championship is locked at 2 × 2 m) and rotate like K lines — drag the round handle on desktop, or use the ⟲/⟳ buttons on your phone.
• Toggle DHA sightlines to check what the handler can see from inside it — the furthest sightline draws solid and its label is marked max, so the longest send is obvious at a glance.
• Every aid has a show/hide eye toggle so you can declutter the canvas — your choices are remembered per course, so it reopens the way you left it.

CHUK extras

Every CHUK course carries one Extra from §9 of the rulebook. When a course’s organisation is CHUK, the Extras panel appears in the designer (and in the phone editor): pick the kind, size it from the panel, and drag the boxes and lines into place on the plan.

• DHB — a Distance Handling Box the handler stays inside for the whole run (Intermediate and above), with an optional Supercharge inner box (§9.4).
• Bonus Boxes — one or more boxes, each worth points for the route sections handled from inside it. Set each section’s first and last route number and its points; they appear on the box label for the briefing.
• Challenge Lines — three lines across the ring, the handler choosing which to stay behind, with an optional Supercharge split running the other way (§9.4).

Validation enforces §9 as you edit — box sizes, which levels allow a DHB, and that Challenge Lines aren’t used at Masters and keep the start and finish in the first third of the ring. Switching the course to BK9 doesn’t delete its Extra — it lies dormant and comes back when you switch back.

Judge sightlines

The judge must see the dog pass through every hoop, tunnel and chute. Turn on Judge sightlines to place a judge marker: lines run to each sighted obstacle and the panel reports the worst viewing angle. Drag the marker to experiment, or use ⌖ Move judge to suggested spot — Hooplan searches the whole ring for the position with the best worst-case view that isn’t on the running line or on top of equipment.

On your phone — walking & AR

On a narrow screen Hooplan switches to the phone view automatically — same library, same courses, full editing. Pinch and drag to zoom and pan; chips along the bottom toggle K lines, DHAs, distances, nearby distances and judge sightlines; Edit opens the same tools as the desktop designer, including draw mode.

• Walk the course — step through the route obstacle by obstacle with the ‹ › buttons, as you would on a course walk.
• AR — on supported phones, project the course at real scale onto the ground in front of you: Android uses WebXR (tap to place, rotate with ⟲/⟳), iPhone opens it in AR Quick Look. The button only appears when your device supports it.

Print / PDF

Print / PDF opens the judge print sheet in a new tab: the course plan with route numbers, distances, and the course details — ready for your browser’s print dialog. To get a PDF, choose Save as PDF as the printer. Prints on the free plan carry a small watermark.

Sharing a course

Share creates a read-only link you can send to anyone — no account needed to view or print it. Viewers who are signed in can Copy to my library and work on their own copy. Links are unguessable; only people you give the link to can open it, and your tags and folders are never included. The shared page always shows your latest saved version.

Importing from other designers

Import in the library accepts course files from other design tools and detects the format automatically:

• Smarter Agility Designer — exported .txt files.
• Agility Designer — .zrdgr files.

The import dialog previews the course as you paste or pick a file and tells you if anything couldn’t be carried across before you commit.

Accounts, sync & plans

• Sign in with Google or a magic email link — no password. Signed-out visitors can explore the read-only example course.
• Everything saves locally first, so editing works offline; changes sync to your account in the background and follow you to any device you sign in on.
• Free plan — 2 courses, watermarked prints. Extra courses you already have become read-only, never deleted.
• Pro (£4/month or £40/year) — unlimited courses, clean prints, share links. Upgrade and manage billing from the account menu, top right.