Indoor Plan, Step by Step
From an office floor plan to a printed camera coverage plan, every click in order.
Before you start
- Your floor plan as a PDF, JPG, PNG, WebP or DXF file.
- One real distance you can read off the plan, such as a wall length or a door width.
- The mounting heights you plan to use for the cameras.
1. Add the floor plan
Click "Floor Plan" in the toolbar at the top.
Click "Add Floor Plan" and choose your file. For a PDF, pick the page with the plan.
Move the plan into place. It sits on the map, so an outdoor site can line up with the satellite view.
On a smaller screen, "Floor Plan" is in the ⋯ menu at the right end of the toolbar. The plan can be moved only while "Floor Plan Mode" is on. Click "Floor Plan" again when it is in place. Later, when you move, turn or resize the plan, the building, walls and cameras drawn on it move with it. To move the plan alone, untick "Move the drawing with the plan" in the floor plan panel.
2. Set the scale
Every range and every coverage area depends on the scale, so set it before anything else. A wrong scale is the most common reason coverage looks out of place.
In the floor plan panel, click "Calibrate Scale".
Click both ends of a distance you know on the plan. The longer the distance, the more accurate the scale.
Enter the real distance between the two points and click "Apply Scale".
3. Trace the building outline
Open "Draw > Building Outline" and choose "Draw manually".
Click each outside corner of the building on the plan.
Click the first point again to close the outline.
4. Draw the interior walls
Open "Draw > Interior wall".
Click inside the building where the wall starts, then click each corner of the wall.
Click the last point again, or press Esc, to finish the wall. Repeat for every wall.
Drew a wall in the wrong place? Click the piece you do not want and press Delete: only that piece goes. To start a new wall at the corner of another wall, click right on that corner.
Camera coverage stops at every wall you draw, so each camera shows only what it can really see.
5. Add doors and windows
Open "Insert > Openings" and choose "Door" or "Window".
Click on the wall where the opening goes.
6. Place the cameras
Open "Insert > Camera", choose a model and click on the plan where the camera is mounted.
Drag the handles to aim the camera and to widen or narrow its view.
In the camera panel, set the mounting height and the tilt. The coverage updates as you type.
To copy a camera, select it and press Ctrl+D (Cmd+D on a Mac), or click the copy icon at the top of the camera panel. The copy appears right next to the original, ready to drag.
7. Make the plan easy to read
- Hide the walls and the outline under "Tools > Walls & obstructions". Coverage still stops at them, so the plan shows clean coverage over your original drawing.
- In the camera panel, under "Appearance > Number or label", choose how each camera is marked: a number in a circle, the number only, a text label or hidden. For a text label, type it in the "Camera label" field right below. One click applies the style to every camera on the floor.
- Drag the number or label on the map to move it. Double-click it to put it back.
- Untick "Show FOV outline" to remove the line around each camera's coverage, and tick "Same colour where cameras overlap (all cameras)" so areas seen by several cameras do not get darker. Cameras you add later take the same look.
8. More floors in the same building
Select the building and click "Interior mode" in its panel.
Click "Add floor above" or "Add floor below". Each floor has its own walls, doors, windows and rooms.
Switch floors in the same card. A camera you place while a floor is open belongs to that floor, and each floor shows only its own cameras.
In the PDF, each floor gets its own page with its own walls and cameras, and the site plan shows the ground floor. To print every floor on one plan instead, untick "PDF: one page per floor" in the export window.
The tabs along the top of the planner ("Floor 1", "Floor 2") are separate sheets for separate buildings or phases of a project, not floors of one building.
9. Export the PDF
Open "Export > Export PDF".
Choose the paper under "Format" (A4, Letter, A3, Ledger or ANSI C) and the layout: "Standard" adds the header, legend and camera list, "Full map" prints the plan on its own.
Drag the orange frame over the area you want, then click "Export PDF".
If something looks wrong
- Coverage far too large or too small: the scale is off. Run "Calibrate Scale" again with a longer known distance.
- Coverage passes through a wall: the wall is missing, or it ends short of the next wall. Extend it until it meets the other wall.
- An interior wall will not start: draw the building outline first. Walls always belong to a building.
Tip: Calibrate with the longest dimension written on the plan rather than a door. A small error on a short distance grows across the whole building.
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