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Hi all,

First post here.

I have made several Floor Plans in CorelDraw 2019 of most building of my campus. All imported from PDFs generated from CAD drawings. Cleaned them up and all spiffy now. I have created Predictive Heat Maps with a Standalone AirWave VM version 8.2.10.1.

The Predictive Heatmaps look nice. I ran into a few things when trying to change the PNG files to ones with a different size and proportions/ratio.

• Exporting floor plans in PNG from CorelDraw works perfectly and looks very nice in AirWave as I have lots of data and Locations Marked with icons of the APs on each Floor Plan.
• The Floor Plans I created are Letter Size and contain lots of information, but I initially only exported the areas with the floor plans and not the full size pages (8 1/2"x11").
• The exported PNG of the Floor Plans included only the buildings with walls, but none of the other objects/labels/notes.
• I imported the Floor Plans into AirWave, drew walls, added Planned APs, generated Heatmaps.
• So far so good... until I found that I needed to re-import PNG files this time with all the info and full 8 1/2" x 11" exports.
• When I re-exported the Floor Plans from CorelDraw to PNG, to change the Background in AirWave for one of the floors, this time in the full Letter Size (8 1/2" x 11") I found that if you use a different size PNG with different proportions things move around and lots of work are needed to fix this and match the AirWave walls to the just imported PNG/Background(s).
• The things I found are as follows:
  • I learned how export ZIP files and edit the XML files to address the proportion issues somewhat on re-import.
  • Learned how to replace the PNG/JPG files contained in the ZIP file(s) to the ones I need updated on re-import.
  • After re-importing I noticed the following:
    • You cannot move all walls and APs all at once. You either have to move wall by wall, point by point, and AP by AP... Would take too long to do on very detailed buildings.
    • You cannot import a CAD file, or other file with just the walls to place on top of a background so that AirWave can automatically create the walls based on Color/Layer Name.
    • I followed this thread to get a sense of what it the colors might be: https://community.arubanetworks.com/t5/Network-Management/Error-in-CAD-Layers/td-p/296699/page/2
    • The AirWave documentation is not clear as to how to create the CAD/DWG files, so I would like to know if it all lines should be:
      
      • Lines
      • Polylines
      • Splines
      • Layer Properties
        • Color
        • Names
        • Etc
• I know. There is No CAD layer to draw the walls automatically though when importing PNGs/other formats, only DWG files.
• So far so good?
• If I could have a feature request it would be to allow the import of either of these formats on top of a background:
  • SVG (InkSkape, free)
  • WMF
  • EPS
  • CDR (CorelDraw)

I had created simplified versions of the floorplans with just the walls for Evacuation sings as those only need walls with thick lines. So I have the walls ready to be exported from CorelDraw to DXF, but I am not able to get the settings/line properties/Layers right in AutoCAD 2020.

Anyhow, any help on this topic appreciated. So far I have tried exporting the Floor Plans from Corel Draw to SVG/DXF/DWG/PDF and import into AutoCAD or InkScape then to AutoCAD again to try to fix them and re-export to DWG but no luck so far. I also tried PDF import into AirWave and it does not do a very good job unless I convert all lines and text to curves, but even then still no CAD layer to create walls automatically. Having to re-draw all of the walls when you need to replace the background is just not very sustainable. 

We should be able to import/export just the walls somehow. Re-set/change background scale/dimensions. Re-set proportions, etc. I think that would speed things up quite a bit.

EDIT: I am able to import DWG files with lines for the layout, but VisualRF is not recognizing the lines for the Walls, it adds random lines as walls where there are no lines, and only about five lines.

EDIT: I am able to do this with AutoCad/CorelDraw to export to PDF/PNG/JPG, but still no walls are automatically recognized on import from DWG so I have to draw them in VisualRF... https://www.semfionetworks.com/blog/preparing-floor-plans-for-ekahau-in-autocad