Dahua's Project Design Tool selects Dahua products, sets the tilt from mounting and target height and shows coverage, blind spots and a 3D view. CCTVplanner designs with Dahua too, and puts Hikvision, Axis, Bosch, Hanwha and the rest of its 113 manufacturers on the same plan, with EN 62676-4 DORI, cable routes and one bill of materials.
Free tier · No credit card · Browser-based
Dahua's Project Design Tool selects and places Dahua products: IP, PTZ, HDCVI and traffic cameras and storage. Many sites and tenders also need Hikvision, Axis, Bosch or Hanwha cameras, and a single-brand tool cannot draw what is not in its catalog.
US federal work and many RFPs exclude Dahua under NDAA Section 889. A tool built around Dahua products cannot design the compliant version of the same site, which CCTVplanner does from the same catalog.
Put a Dahua IPC-HFW3849 next to a Hikvision DS-2CD2T87 and an Axis P3265 on the same plan. One EN 62676-4 calculation, one set of DORI rings at 25, 62.5, 125 and 250 px/m, and one bill of materials for every brand.
Switch the camera picker to NDAA Section 889 compliant brands only. In a US project the design check flags every camera from a covered brand, and the PDF compliance summary has an NDAA column for each camera.
Stack floors, draw cable routes and place switches and recorders. The design check compares the cameras' PoE draw with the switch budgets and flags copper runs over 90 m before the cable is pulled.
Import the architect's DXF with its layers, blocks and hatches, or an aerial image, and set the scale with two clicks. Export a DXF for the contractor and a client-ready PDF, white-labelled with your logo on Studio.
| CCTVplanner | Dahua Project Design Tool | |
|---|---|---|
| Camera catalog | 65,000+ models · 113 brands, Dahua included | Dahua only |
| NDAA Section 889 | Compliant-only filter, design check and PDF column | Dahua products, which Section 889 covers |
| Site plan | Architect's DXF, satellite map or floor plan image | Maps in several modes |
| Coverage | EN 62676-4 DORI per camera, Johnson DRI for thermal | Coverage, blind spots and 3D view |
| Deliverables | PDF report, DXF, CSV camera list and a priced bill of materials | Equipment list, installation report and system proposal |
Everything below is in the product today, on the free tier, and none of it needs an install. Open it in a browser and check it against Dahua Project Design Tool on a job you already know.
No install and no workstation. Walk the site from any camera point of view, with DORI silhouettes standing at the Detect, Observe, Recognize and Identify distances so the customer sees what the camera sees. Sun and shadow study for the time of day that matters, and one-click 3D PDF export for the people who will never open a design tool.
Every cone is computed from the sensor, resolution and focal length at the mounting height (1 to 20 m) and tilt you set, then clipped by buildings, fences and real ground elevation on satellite imagery. On a flat indoor floor a 2D tool agrees with us. On a sloped yard or a sunken loading dock it does not, and that gap is exactly where the blind spots are.
Racking, containers, concrete blocks, scaffolding, solar panels, trees, and the machinery a live construction site actually parks in the shot: excavators, cranes, concrete mixers, bulldozers, vans and pickups. Each one carries real dimensions and a vertical range, and the field of view clips against it with the shadow drawn on the plan.
Stack ground floor, mezzanine, plant room and roof as separate levels. Draw walls, close rooms and read the floor area back in square metres. Cabling routes between levels, the topology graph carries across them, and each floor exports as its own DXF sheet and PDF page.
Predictive coverage for access points using ITU-R P.2040 wall transmission and a P.1238 margin, drawn as a heatmap over the same plan the cameras sit on. Point-to-point links are checked for line of sight against the buildings and terrain, so the wireless leg of the design fails on screen rather than on site.
51 specified cable types with PoE budget from loop resistance, DC voltage drop, fibre loss budget with splice and connector allowances, coax attenuation per format, speaker line loading and conduit fill. Route length is measured on the drawn route and carries straight into the bill of materials, the cable schedule and the customer offer.
The plan is validated while you draw it: DORI shortfall, blind spots, perimeter gaps, PoE budget and class escalation, cable length and category headroom, conduit bundling, fibre loss, thermal lens and pairing, EMC and environmental class, lightning protection zones, ONVIF profile mixing, NDAA compliance, bandwidth headroom and switch port capacity.
CAD-grade DXF (AutoCAD R2018 / AC1021) on named layers with BLOCK, INSERT, SPLINE, ELLIPSE, HATCH and DIMENSION preserved, inside an ISO 5457 sheet frame with an ISO 7200 title block. Multi-page PDF with bill of materials, cable schedule, equipment list, elevation views, coverage analysis, acceptance test protocol, maintenance schedule and the GDPR Article 35 DPIA worksheet.
For a Dahua-only job, Dahua's tool selects products, recommends cameras for a scenario, sets the tilt from mounting and target height and shows coverage, blind spots and a 3D view. CCTVplanner is built for the jobs around it: sites that mix brands, tenders that need NDAA-compliant cameras and architects who send DXF. It is free for small projects (2 projects, 6 cameras) and unlocks unlimited projects and cameras at €5 a month or €50 a year.
Yes. The catalog lists 1960 Dahua models across the IP, PTZ, HDCVI, multi-sensor and thermal lines, with sensor, lens, IR and IP rating data from Dahua datasheets. A Dahua-only project works the same way, and other brands can join it at any point.
Section 889 names Dahua, so its cameras and those sold under its Imou brand are excluded from US federal projects. The camera picker can show compliant brands only, the design check of a US project flags every covered camera, and the PDF compliance summary has an NDAA column. The NDAA page lists the covered brands.
The design exports as PDF and DXF and the camera list as CSV: the PDF for the customer's sign-off, the DXF for the cabling contractor and the list for procurement. After installation the integrator adds the cameras to DSS or DSS Express as usual, so no project file has to pass between design and operation.
Which camera brands Section 889 covers, brand by brand.
Honest hardware comparison of the two market leaders.
Detect / Observe / Recognize / Identify per EN 62676-4.
Mbps per camera and total network load — codec aware.
Every brand on one plan, with DORI, DXF and an NDAA filter. Free tier covers 2 projects and 6 cameras. No credit card.
