Switching from JVSG: Complete 2026 Migration Guide for CCTV Designers

Why integrators are migrating away from JVSG in 2026

JVSG is a capable, well-established Windows desktop tool. The reason migrations have accelerated in 2026 is not that JVSG suddenly got worse — it is that the surrounding world changed. Architects send DXF files now. Clients want a link, not a printed PDF. Field engineers carry phones and tablets, not laptops. EU buyers ask explicit questions about data residency. And procurement teams have stopped budgeting for $500+ perpetual desktop licenses when a €4.17/month subscription does the same job from any browser.

The most common trigger we see is a single, small operational moment: a designer wants to tweak a camera position in front of a customer who is asking, on a phone, in a basement, and the JVSG license is on a Windows laptop sitting in the office. After that happens twice, people start looking for a browser-based alternative. This guide is for them.

We will not pretend the migration is zero effort. It is not. But it is also not the multi-week project people fear. With the DXF in hand and the camera list already on a spreadsheet, a small site can move in under an hour, and a mid-size site moves in an afternoon. The rest of this guide is the exact step sequence we recommend.

Pre-migration checklist

Spend ten minutes preparing exports from JVSG before you touch the new tool. The migration is dramatically faster if you arrive with these four artefacts already in hand:

If any of those four artefacts are missing or stale, fix them in JVSG first. Migrating is straightforward; reverse-engineering decisions you made eighteen months ago is not.

Step 1 — Create a CCTVplanner account

Open the CCTVplanner sign-up page. The Free tier asks for an email and a password. There is no credit card and there is no trial that expires on you. Confirm your email and you are inside the designer.

Create a new project and name it after the site you are migrating. The naming convention we recommend is "Client — Site — Year" because it sorts cleanly when you have ten or twenty migrated projects in the dashboard.

Step 2 — Import your floor plan

Click "Import" in the designer toolbar and drop in the DXF or DWG you exported earlier. The CCTVplanner DXF importer is comprehensive — it parses BLOCK, INSERT, SPLINE, ELLIPSE, HATCH and DIMENSION entities, so layered architectural drawings load with their structure intact rather than as a flat raster image.

If you only have a PDF floor plan from JVSG, you can still import it as a backdrop. The scale step is identical — pick a known dimension, type the real-world length, and the rest of the designer aligns to it.

Step 3 — Re-place cameras from the catalog

Open the camera catalog and search by manufacturer or model. With 23,025+ models indexed, the odds are very good that the exact JVSG model is here. If something is missing, pick the closest equivalent on sensor size, focal length and resolution — the calculation engine cares about those parameters, not the SKU on the box.

For sites with more than ten cameras, working in alphabetical order from the JVSG export keeps you from accidentally skipping one. Tick each row off the list as you go. The whole step takes 30–60 seconds per camera once you find a rhythm.

Step 4 — Match your DORI thresholds

CCTVplanner uses the EN 62676-4 DORI definitions: 25 ppm for detection, 62 ppm for observation, 125 ppm for recognition and 250 ppm for identification. JVSG uses the same standard, so your previously signed-off thresholds map across one-to-one. Open each camera, set the DORI overlay, and confirm the identification distance is at least the value your client signed off on.

For zones where the original design has identification beyond an entry, observation across a corridor and detection at the perimeter, drop those three thresholds onto the canvas and let the renderer colour-code which camera satisfies which zone. This is also where compliance flags surface in CCTVplanner — anywhere a camera is asked to do more pixels per metre than its lens and resolution allow, you get a visible warning rather than a quietly miscalculated identification distance.

If you used custom thresholds in JVSG (some specialised verticals use 200 ppm or 150 ppm rather than 125 or 250), you can override the per-camera target inline. The numerical values from your original design transfer directly.

Step 5 — Re-route cabling

Place the network closet (NVR, switch, or PoE source) on the canvas and route a cable from each camera back to it. CCTVplanner calculates the run length per cable as you draw, taking turns and obstacles into account. The number is visible directly in the edit panel and propagates into the bill of materials automatically.

For multi-closet topologies — typical on warehouse or campus designs — drop additional closets and assign each camera to the nearest one. The exact topology graph is solved with BFS daisy-chain logic so closet assignments and total cable length stay consistent even on large sites with multiple NVRs and wireless access points.

Aim to land within roughly ±5% of your JVSG cable totals. Larger drift usually means either the floor plan scale is slightly off (revisit step 2) or your closet locations have moved — both are quick to fix and easy to spot.

Step 6 — Export the PDF deliverable

The deliverable that closes the loop on most CCTV proposals is a multi-page PDF. CCTVplanner ships one out of the box — title page, floor plan with cameras and FOVs, BOM with quantities and unit costs, equipment list with model numbers, elevation views per camera, and an itemised cost estimate. Click Export, pick PDF, and you have it.

You can also export DXF for the architect, PNG for embedding in slide decks, and CSV for the BOM if your finance system needs structured data. The export menu is one click; everything is server-rendered so the file lands the same regardless of which device or browser you initiated it from.

Common gotchas during migration

Most migrations go smoothly, but three issues account for almost every time we get a support ticket. Save yourself the round-trip and check them before you call the migration done.

Post-migration: sharing with field teams

Once the project is migrated, the part that was painful with a Windows-only tool becomes trivial. Generate a share link and send it. The technician opens it on a phone, on a tablet, on whatever device they have on site. No install, no licensing, no printing PDFs that go stale the moment a camera moves.

Trusted by integrators from all over the world, this is the post-migration capability most people highlight when asked what changed. It is not a flashy feature — it is just that the design becomes a live artefact instead of a snapshot, and that single change quietly reshapes how your team works.

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