Wireless Access

Dear Fellows,

 

Could anyone please let me know whether or not Visual RF planner (indoor) automatically considers and understands the material type of the interior/exterior structure of the building when using AutoCad drawing for planning and designing?

 

I know we can choose to draw different type of walls (concrete, glass etc.) manually but don't know whether we must use this option for autocad input drawing as well?

 

Also, how can we be sure that the autocad drawing (map) we have for designing/planning was created by defining the martial type of the walls along with the dimensions?

 

Really confused. Please help :(

 

 

aruba.markus,

 

It does not understand the types of material in autocad, no.

 

You have to draw them yourself for the materials to be factored into the coverage.

 

Autocad has dimensions, layers and images.  VisualRF uses this information for sizing and the display of the background, but it does not classify the materials as wood, steel, brick, etc.

Could anyone please let me know whether or not Visual RF planner (indoor) automatically considers and understands the material type of the interior/exterior structure of the building when using AutoCad drawing for planning and designing?

 

NO - you should draw the walls & choose the diffrent meterails by yourself.

 

I know we can choose to draw different type of walls (concrete, glass etc.) manually but don't know whether we must use this option for autocad input drawing as well?

 

YES - in order to get accurte design as u can,It's importent to draw the walls.

 

Also, how can we be sure that the autocad drawing (map) we have for designing/planning was created by defining the martial type of the walls along with the dimensions?

 

AutoCad - just supplying the deminision of the floor to the VisualRF (if the CAD got those details)

 

 

Thanks cjoseph and kdisc98 for the prompt response.

 

Got the answers and everything is clear now :)

 

 

Just 2 more supplementary questions please;

 

1.  How accurate are the results of Visual RF tool (assuming that everything was designed as per the book)? Especially in terms of signal strength, what and how much variations can we expect from the real deployment?

 

2.  In the hospitality industry, what optimized (in terms of AP quantity and with more than average performance) design is recommended other than AP-in-a-Room design? Also please suggest the position/placement of the APs in the room (if its recommended) for best performance.

 

 

Thanks again.

aruba.markus,

 

Any planning tool is only as good as the information that you can feed into it.  Most people have just a floor plan and not information about obstacles and their exact density, so those normally do not get entered into a tool.  There are many things that are also unseen that affect RF that VisualRF will never have knowledge about.

 

The RF Planning tool should not be used to automatically obtain where to place access points, but as a starting point to survey.  

 

If you are going to be spending alot of money purchasing, running cable to and mounting access points, a survey is needed to fully understand the effect off the RF.  If you deploy solely based on VisualRF, it could be costly due to the fact that you cannot enter every single factor that will have an effect on your wifi deployment. You could end up with too much or too little coverage and both can be costly to fix later.

 

 

VisualRF gives you a starting point for your suvey.  In terms of a hospitality deployment, many times where you can mount access points is limited, so that might dictate your access point numbers and placement more than an RF planning tool would.  

 

- Use VisualRF to get an idea where you would place access points

- Do a physical survey to determine if the model in VisualRF is useful

- Make changes as needed.

 

If after the survey you find that the suggested placement by VisualRF is good, you can than trust VisualRF to model a similar environment.

 

 

Well that helped alot.

 

Thanks both of you :)

1 - Based on my usage : 5-15% (if you really got all the needed details)

2 - Each site got his own physical topology - design and deploy based on your client/site needs.