The Auto Generate Heats feature lets you assign athletes to heats and lanes in seconds, based on criteria you define. It works at any point — before the event when setting up your initial heat structure, or mid-competition when you need to quickly re-seed athletes by rank with no time to spare.
To access it, go to the workout you want to generate heats for, open the Heat Assignments tab, and click Auto Generate Heats. You'll be walked through a short set of options that control how athletes are organised.
Stations Per Heat
Set the number of lanes or stations available in each heat. The system uses this to calculate how many heats are needed to accommodate all athletes in the selected divisions.
Division Handling
Choose how the system fills heats when divisions don't perfectly match your station count:
Split Divisions — each division stays separate. Athletes from different divisions will never share a heat.
Overlap Divisions — the system will combine divisions to fill heats efficiently. For example, if you have 10 lanes and 4 Scaled athletes alongside 6 Rx athletes, they'll be placed into a single heat together rather than running two partially-filled heats.
Division Order
If you have multiple divisions, you can control which division competes first. Selecting Based on Divisions List Order will sequence your divisions in the order they appear in your Divisions settings. In the example below, Rx Men's would go first, Scaled Men's second, and so on.
Sort Competitors By
Choose how athletes are ordered within and across heats:
Rank (Low to Top) — lower-ranked athletes go in earlier heats, top performers in the final heat. For example, in a division of 30 athletes across 3 heats of 10: the bottom 10 go first, the middle 10 second, and the top 10 last. This is the standard approach for creating a competitive final heat.
Rank (Top to Low) — the reverse of the above, with top performers going in the earliest heats.
Name (A–Z) or Name (Z–A) — alphabetical order by first name. Useful for initial heat setup before any scores exist.
Randomise — assigns athletes to heats in no specific order.
Note: Sorting by rank requires scores to be entered for the relevant workout. Make sure all scores are in and verified before generating rank-based heats to ensure accurate placement.
Swim Lane Assignments
When enabled, the system positions the top-ranked athlete in each heat in the centre lane, then places the next-ranked athletes on alternating sides outward — mirroring the format used in elite competition finals. This creates a visual centrepiece on the floor and makes it easy for judges, spectators, and cameras to know where the leader is.
Limitations and Manual Adjustments
Auto Generate Heats is fast, but it works within a fixed set of parameters. The result is a starting point — not always a finished product. A few things to keep in mind:
Human review is often needed. The system doesn't account for every real-world nuance — athletes who requested to be in a specific heat, known conflicts between competitors, or venue-specific lane preferences. Always review the generated heats before publishing them to athletes.
You can move athletes after generation. Once the auto-generate runs, the heat canvas is fully editable. Drag individual athletes between heats and lanes to make any adjustments needed. The auto-generate gives you the bulk of the work done — fine-tuning the rest manually is quick.
Complex arrangements may be better built manually. If you have a very specific way you want athletes assigned that falls outside the available parameters — such as custom groupings, non-standard seeding logic, or mixed-format heats — the manual heat assignment approach gives you complete control from the start. See Setting Up Heats, Lane Assignments and Schedules for the full manual workflow.