Now in Beta: An AutoCAD plug-in to help check floor plan readiness
For many organizations, the road (or is it an elevator?) to a functional indoor GIS begins with a folder full of CAD floor plans. However, the CAD data given to the GIS specialist may be missing key information, or geometries may not be constructed in a manner ready for loading into the Indoors geodatabase.
For ArcGIS Indoors to generate Indoors features from CAD floor plans, the Indoors Model relies on the relevant linework and text being present and positioned correctly in the floor plan drawings. Dangling endpoints and the occasional duplicate room number may not matter much when using a CAD drawing for construction purposes, but connected linework and unique room identifiers are generally required when building an indoor GIS for operational uses such as space planning, wayfinding, and workspace reservations.
To help with this, an ArcGIS Indoors plug-in has been developed for AutoCAD that can diagnose CAD floor plan readiness by checking for missing data or incorrect geometries before importing into the Indoors geodatabase. At time of publishing, the plug-in can check for the following conditions:
- Unclosed room boundaries, where small gaps with dangling endpoints may prevent Units from importing as expected. For example, here’s a door swing arc (brown) that stops several millimeters away from connecting with a wall (gray).
The plug-in marks (cyan) a door swing arc (brown) where it undershoots a wall (gray)
- Self-intersecting polylines that loop back on themselves and may unexpectedly import as multi-part features.
- Missing or conflicting room names, which can lead to unexpected results when searching or wayfinding with an Indoors app.
The plug-in marks (cyan) conflicting room names (orange)
The plug-in marks these conditions on the drawing and lists each occurrence in an interactive table. The marks (cyan by default) and the table make it easy to quickly locate and review each occurrence, allowing the AutoCAD user to focus on fixing—rather than finding!—potential issues.
The ArcGIS Indoors plug-in for AutoCAD is now in private beta as a standalone plug-in (there are plans to integrate it into ArcGIS for AutoCAD® later in 2023). If you’re interested in participating in the beta, you can sign up here!