Can we upload an AutoCAD DWG file directly?

Only where a DWG converter, the ODA File Converter, is installed on the DigiMaps server, and it is not part of the standard install. The reliable route is to save each floor as DXF in AutoCAD and upload that. DXF is read directly, with no AI involved. For a large DWG set, our team can run the conversion for you.

How long does it take to turn our drawings into a map?

It depends on the drawings more than on the software. Clean DXF files with room names and doors on their own layers are quickest; drawings with furniture, missing labels or floors drawn at different origins take longer. We look at one floor with you first and agree the timeline from that.

Do we have to clean up the drawings ourselves?

No, but it helps. Freezing furniture and services layers, binding external references and keeping room names inside room outlines saves review time later. For a full set of floors or buildings, our team can run the conversion for you.

Will the map be at the right scale?

Yes, once you set it. Pick a wall whose real length you know, enter that length, and the whole plan rescales to true size. From then on walking distances and times in directions are in real metres.

What happens when the building changes?

Small changes, such as a new door or a renamed room, are made in Studio and published as a new release. If our team converted your CAD set, a later re-import from updated drawings keeps the edits your team made in Studio.

From AutoCAD DWG to an interactive indoor map

What you need before you start

Most of the time in a conversion goes on things the drawing does not say. Gather these before the first import.

What	Why it matters	If you do not have it
One DWG or DXF per floor	Each floor becomes a level visitors can switch to	Ask the architect to export one file per floor
Room names or numbers as text	They become place names and search terms	Rooms can be named later in the Studio directory
Doors drawn in their walls	Routes can only pass through doorways	Doors can be added in the editor
Lifts, stairs and escalators	They connect floors, and step-free routes depend on the lifts	Add them as transitions in the editor
Exits from your approved fire plan	Needed for emergency guidance, and for hospital release checks	We do not invent exits; they have to come from your safety team
One wall length you trust	It sets the true scale of the plan	Measure one on site
A list of staff-only rooms	They are kept off public screens	Industry pack defaults apply until someone decides
Kiosk positions and the way each faces	Each becomes a “You are here” point	Place kiosks in Studio once the map exists

Step 1: Clean the drawing in AutoCAD

An architect’s working drawing carries far more than a visitor map needs: furniture, lighting, ductwork, revision clouds. None of it helps a visitor find Cardiology, and some of it gets in the way. A short session in the layer manager saves a long one in review.

WAYVALE-GEN-G.dwg Layer properties

Layer	Holds	Before export	Why
A-WALL	Walls and partitions	Keep	The outline of every room
A-DOOR	Door blocks and swings	Keep	Where routes can pass
A-FLOR-STRS	Stairs and escalators	Keep	Floor changes, and what step-free avoids
A-FLOR-EVTR	Lift shafts and cars	Keep	Step-free floor changes
A-FLOR-IDEN	Room names and numbers	Keep	Place names and search terms
A-ANNO-DIMS	Dimensions	Note it	Note one wall length for the scale step
A-FURN	Furniture	Freeze	Clutter that can read as small rooms
E-LITE	Lighting	Freeze	Not part of the map
M-HVAC	Ductwork	Freeze	Not part of the map
A-ANNO-TTLB	Title block and notes	Freeze	Text that can be mistaken for room names

Layer names follow the common AIA style and are only an example. Your architect’s names may differ; what matters is that walls, doors, stairs, lifts and room names each sit on their own layer.

A few more habits make any conversion cleaner, whichever tool reads the file:

Bind or remove external references, so the file you send is complete on its own.
Put each room name inside its room, as text, one label per room. A name in the title block or outside the walls attaches to the wrong space.
Close room outlines where you can, so a room has an inside.
Check the drawing units, millimetres or metres, and that the floor is drawn at full size.
Use the same origin and rotation on every floor, so that the lift on Level 1 lands on top of the lift on the ground floor.

Step 2: Choose how the file comes in

Route	Use it when	What to know
DXF upload in Studio	You can save as DXF from AutoCAD	Read natively, with no AI. Works on-premises and on air-gapped sites. The most reliable route.
DWG upload in Studio	You only have DWG	Works only where the ODA File Converter is installed on the server, which is not part of the standard install. Otherwise save as DXF, or send the set to our team.
Full CAD set to our team	Many floors or buildings, or a hospital with strict privacy rules	We convert it through our venue pipeline with quality and privacy checks. Later re-imports keep your Studio edits.
PDF or image only	No CAD file exists	AI-assisted tracing proposes room outlines for your team to review, or you trace by hand over an image underlay.

DWG is AutoCAD’s own binary format, and most software outside AutoCAD reads it through a converter. Saving as DXF yourself moves that step into the program that drew the file.

Step 3: Import and check what was read

The new-venue wizard asks for the industry, the languages and the buildings, then takes your plans. A building can have up to 50 floors, and each building keeps its own floor list, so two blocks that both have a “Level 1” do not collide.

Pass 1 · The drawing as read

The ground floor of a fictional hospital straight from DXF: walls, door swings, stairs, lift shafts and room text, each on its own layer.

Before going further, check three things on every floor: that it is there, that it is named the way visitors say it (“Ground”, “Level 1”, not “FFL +4500”), and that the floors stack in the right order.

Step 4: Set the scale from one measured wall

A drawing with the wrong units gives directions that are wrong in a way nobody notices until a visitor is told a 200 m walk takes 20 seconds. Fix it once, at the start.

Illustrative drawing, not a Studio screenshot. Pick a long wall you can measure with a laser on site, not a short one: a 1 cm error on a 1 m wall is a 1% error everywhere.

A single building can stay in local metres. A campus with several buildings can instead be placed on the globe in WGS 84 coordinates, so that the buildings sit in the right place relative to each other and to the street.

Step 5: Turn rooms into places

Room text is matched against the industry pack you picked, so a room labelled “WC” is filed under Restrooms and shows up when someone searches for a toilet. Matching handles Arabic, Persian and Urdu letter variants and digits. The hospital pack’s rules are tested against 412 de-identified hospital CAD labels.

Pass 2 · Rooms become places

The same floor after matching: departments, the pharmacy and café, restrooms, lifts and stairs, with staff-only rooms hatched.

In the hospital and government packs, any room type the rules do not recognise stays staff-only until someone decides, because guessing the other way is the mistake that matters. Then work through the directory:

Rename places the way visitors say them, in every language you publish. Each name carries a status: Missing, Draft, Reviewed or Approved.
Check categories, so the Pharmacy shows under Pharmacy and not under Clinics.
Enter opening hours. A day you leave empty is published as unknown, never guessed.
Confirm which rooms are staff-only. They are removed from every public screen when you publish.

Step 6: Turn doors, lifts and stairs into routes

A map without a route network is a picture. Studio can generate links from every doorway to the corridor, then you add what the drawing cannot say on its own.

Pass 3 · Doors become routes

The navigation graph: door and corridor nodes, lift and stair transitions, and exits. Dashed links lead to staff-only rooms.

Connect floors with lifts, stairs and escalators as transitions. A floor with stairs but no lift link has no step-free way in or out, and step-free routes will flag it rather than quietly use the stairs.
Mark exits from your approved fire plan. Without them there is no “Show me the way out”, and the hospital life-safety profile will not publish.
Add restrictions to links that need them: out of service, or open only at certain hours.

The navigation graph is what every direction, walking time and step-free choice is calculated on, so it is worth a second pair of eyes.

Step 7: Check everything before the first publish

Check	How	Who
Preflight passes	Studio checks six rule families: exits, floor transitions, unnamed rooms, geometry, accessibility and isolated rooms. Critical issues block publishing.	Map editor
Reviewer suggestions	The built-in reviewer flags missing exits, unlinked stairs and unnamed rooms. Apply or dismiss each one.	Map editor
Every public room is reachable	Route from each kiosk position to your 20 most asked-for destinations.	Facilities
Step-free routes use the lifts	Repeat those routes with the wheelchair profile.	Accessibility lead
Names read correctly	Read the directory in every language you publish.	Front desk and translator
Private stays private	Search for three staff-only rooms. None should appear.	IT or privacy officer
It matches the building	Walk the map at eye height in Studio, then walk two real routes with a phone in hand.	Facilities

Step 8: Publish, then keep it current

Publishing freezes the map into a release that kiosks, phones and signage all read. If your team uses review, a second person approves it first; you can also schedule it for tonight. Kiosks pick up a new release only when nobody is using them, and if something is wrong you roll back to the previous version.

After launch, most changes are not map changes. A closed restroom or a moved clinic is posted live and reaches screens within seconds, without a new release. The map itself stays yours: Studio exports it as IMDF, GeoJSON or KML at any time.

Where conversions usually go wrong

Problem	What you see	Fix
Room names outside rooms, or in the title block	Places with no name, or the wrong name	Move labels inside outlines, or rename in the directory
Doors drawn as gaps with no door layer	Rooms with no way in	Add doors in the editor, then regenerate the links
Floors drawn at different origins	Floors that do not line up; lifts that land in the wrong place	Align the origin and rotation before export
Wrong units	Walking times that are obviously off	Set the scale from a measured wall
Furniture and services left on	Clutter, and small shapes read as rooms	Freeze those layers
Lifts and stairs drawn on the wall layer	No connections between floors	Move them to their own layers, or add transitions in Studio
Exits not marked	No emergency guidance; hospital releases blocked	Mark exits from the approved fire plan

If all you have is a PDF

Plenty of buildings only have a PDF, or a scan of a printed plan. AI-assisted tracing proposes room outlines, doors and labels from the first page of the file, and your team reviews and completes each one before anything is published. It can be switched off, and it is off by default on-premises. Without AI, drop the plan in as an image underlay and trace it with the editor tools.

Either way, a PDF gives you a draft that a person finishes, not a finished map. The floor plan import page lists every format and how well each one works.