What is plan view?

Plan view is a cloud feature that allows users to upload floor plans of their floors for their sites onto the cloud. Users can then place the control systems and device locations for that floor on the plan. Once placed users can view and edit the control systems and device locations from plan view.

Plan view can be accessed from either a site's dashboard or sidebar.

When loading plan view for the first time you will see all of the floors listed on the site in the left side panel. The first floor will be selected. If there are floors with a floor plan already uploaded it will select that floor and load up that plan automatically. If there are no floors created on the site then you can create a floor using grid view.

In the center of the screen will be the upload dialog unless a floor plan has already been uploaded for that floor in which case it should load that floor plan. Floor plans can be uploaded through this dialog by either dragging a file from your file explorer onto the dotted area or by clicking the "Select files" button and choosing your file. Currently we only accept single page vector based PDF files which are 25MB or less in size.

When a valid file has been selected to be uploaded the details of the file will be displayed in the input area. There will also be an input to set the scale for the floor plan before it is uploaded. Once the information has been confirmed and a scale has been set click the "Upload" button to begin uploading the file to the cloud.

The floor plan will then go into a queued state. This means that it has been queued to be processed by the cloud. How long until it begins processing can vary depending on how many users have floor plans being processed by the cloud at the time. You can change the floor plan to be processed for the floor when it is queued but once it begins processing it cannot be changed.

The floor plan will begin processing once an available spot is free to do so. This process can vary depending on how big of a file was uploaded and the scale of the file.

When processing has been completed for the floor plan it will automatically load up the floor plan.

Control systems and device locations can be added from the edit view. Clicking "Edit" in the bottom of the left panel from the floors view will enter edit mode. A bar will appear at the top with various controls for editing the floor plan. For now our attention is in the "Place" tab where we can click "Control system" or "Device" to add either control systems or device locations to our floor plan.

Clicking on either of these buttons will display list in the right side panel of all of the control systems or device locations for the floor. The first item will be selected by default as indicated by the grey background colour. We can add items onto the floor plan by either clicking where we want to place it or by clicking and dragging from the right side menu onto the floor plan. By default the next item at the top of the list will be selected but can be turned off by clicking the checkbox under the search box in the panel. To select a particular item we can click it in the panel. Clicking the item again will deselect it if already selected.

Filtering can also be applied to the list by either typing in a search term in the search bar or clicking the "Filter" text next to the search bar to expand the filter options. These can then be configured and applied by clicking the "Apply changes" button. Clicking the "Clear" button in the top right of the filter area will revert all filters back to the defaults.

Changes that are made to control systems and device locations on the map whether it be adding new features to the map or changing their location will not be saved straight away. Instead they will be added to a queue to be saved. In order to save these changes the "Save" button indicated by a floppy disk under the "Home" tab must be clicked or you can use the CTRL + S hotkey. The changes will then be committed to the cloud to be written to the devices.

There are other controls on the edit bar to help you when modifying your floor plan. The first two buttons are undo/redo buttons. They will revert changes or redo previously reverted changes so if you ever accidentally move a feature on the plan you can easily undo the change so that it doesn't get sent to the cloud. These can also be access using the hotkeys Ctrl + Z for undo or Ctrl + Y for redo.

After the save button is the exit button. This will exit edit mode and return back to the default view mode. If there are any changes that have not been sent to the cloud when clicking exit a prompt will appear alerting you of such. You may want to consider saving your changes or you can discard your changes and continue but you cannot get back these changes. You can also press the "Escape" key on your keyboard to exit edit mode.

Following the exit button are other selection modes that can be used on the floor plan. "Free select" is the default mode which you can use to click on features like normal to select them. "Rectangle" allows you to click on a two positions on the map to draw a rectangle and selects all of the icons within the area. "Polygon" allow you to click on multiple positions on the map to try a polygon shape which when completed selects all of the icons in the drawn area.

Under the "Place" tab apart from the "Control system" and "Device" add menus there are controls for displaying a grid overlay on the map. The grid overlay is a tool used when placing features onto the map or moving features around. Features will snap to the vertices of the grid when it is active allowing consistent placement across your floor. The first button is a dropdown for selecting the size of the grid squares. The next two buttons are used for specifying the horizontal and vertical offsets for the grid so that if your grid doesn't quite line up with your floor plan you can easily adjust it so that it lines up correctly to the fittings on your floor plan. The grid is not required of course but it can be helpful when placing lots of features with precision.

The "Group" tab has similar drawing features to the selection drawing tools except the area drawn stays drawn when finished allowing devices to be added to a group and it will use the area drawn for the group region. For more information on groups check the How to add groups to a plan in plan view how to guide.

The last tab, "Settings" tab, has menus for updating various settings. The first button is "Floor plan". These are settings that apply to the current floor plan that is currently selected. You can also add new versions of the floor plan for the current floor here and switch between other versions of the floor plan. If a new version of the floor plan is slightly offset compared to the last one it can be updated with the "Shift x" and "Shift y" settings. To remove an uploaded floor plan from a site then you can click the Remove from site button. A warning will appear so that it cannot be easily removed. All icons, groups and areas will need to be removed from the floor plan before attempting this otherwise it will fail to remove.+

The cog icon attached to the left sidebar can be clicked on to display user settings. These are settings that are set for each user for each site with the exception of the icon quality which is set as a cookie in the browser. 

When in edit mode you can also drag features around the map to re-position them. Clicking on a feature will populate the right side panel with information about the feature and will also contain settings that can be configured for the feature. If the feature is no longer required on the floor plan then users can click the "Remove" button in the right side panel after selecting a feature or can press the "Delete" key to remove it. Once again these changes will not be saved until the "Save button" is clicked and can be undone if needed.

Multiple features can be selected and have their common settings change by holding down the CTRL key when clicking on features. This allows changes to be made to multiple features at once including removing multiple features.

When in view mode after exiting edit mode by clicking the "Exit" button in the edit bar, users can select icons the same way as you can in edit mode to view different information about the feature. It will also display other functions that can be executed on a feature such as sending Off, Min, Max or Identify to the feature and associated fittings.

When zoomed out far enough and the device clustering radius threshold has been hit, features will automatically cluster together and will display a number representing the number of features within that cluster. Clicking this cluster in either view or edit mode will display the features that are in the cluster in the right side panel. Clicking on one of these features in the panel will then automatically select it on the map which allows the user to view or edit that particular feature.

Selecting the cluster as part of a multiple select will select all of the features in that cluster allowing actions to be undertaken on all of the features within that cluster.

Next to the left side panel are a few buttons. When a floor plan is currently being viewed there will be three buttons above the panel buttons. They provide the ability to zoom in, zoom out and zoom out to min zoom in that order. You can also use the scroll wheel to zoom in and out of the map but this provides a way of using that functionality through buttons.

If you would like to rotate your current plan temporarily, you can do so on PC by holding Alt + Shift and clicking + dragging the plan. On mobile you should just be able to pinch + rotate the plan.

You can reset rotate by clicking the arrow in the top-left of the plan view.

The buttons below that control the left side panel and what is displayed. By default it is on the floors panel which displays information about all of the floors on the site. There is also a layers panel which is used to display only certain features on the map. It can also toggle the labels on the floor plan. The last panel is the legend panel which describes different colours, icons and text on the floor plan itself.

Analytics

Plan view analytics can be accessed from the new icon in the left siderbar.

Heatmap

Heatmaps are rendered on the map as temperatures, from blue to red, where the highest values currently are on the floor plan, using different methods of determining heat levels.

Display

• Last value
  • Uses the last value received from the device in relation to the Min value and Max value to determine the heat level. Anything above the Max value is maximum heat.
• Rolling average
  • Uses all of the values received in the Period in relation to the Min value and Max value to calculate the heat level.
• Rate of change
  • Counts the number of times a value has been received within the given Period against the Max changes to determine the heat level, with the Max changes value being the highest number of changes in the Period to be at maximum heat level.

Min value to display

Any values under this value will not be displayed on the heatmap. Automatically calculated uses the other devices on the control system and calculates the lowest reported value from them and uses that as the Min value. Custom will display the Min value input which allows you put in your own minimum value.

Limit/cap max value

Any values over this value will be displayed on the heatmap at maximum heat. Automatically calculated uses the other devices on the control system and calculates the highest reported value from them and uses that as the Max value. Custom will display the Max value input which allows you put in your own maximum value.

Size/Blur

The Size is the radius of each heatmap point on the map using pixels. The heat on the heatmap will stay consistent as you zoom and will take into account the Blur to blur into other nearby heatmap points on the map so that they merge into one. These values will need to be fine tuned to your liking and for the floor plan that is displayed.

Pulsemap

Pulsemaps will listen for any values sent from devices and whenever one is received, emits a blue pulse on the floor plan.

Duration

How long the pulse lasts when a value is received from the device.

Size

The size of the radius in real world centimeters. This means that the circle will change screen size as you zoom in and out and should stay a consistent size with your icons.

Width

How thick the circle of the pulse is in pixels.

Label data

The label data dropdowns determine what label is shown for icons on the floor plan. Each type of icon can have a label data set for it but you cannot set multiple of the same type.