How to trace a floor plan into an indoor map, by hand or with AI

Spatial Map is an indoor map editor in which you trace a floor plan into walls, doors, rooms, racks, stairs and lifts — by hand, or by letting AI Map draft them for you to review. This guide covers how to trace a floor plan well either way. Tracing means drawing objects over a placed drawing: the PDF, DWG or image stays underneath as a reference, and what you draw on top becomes the map that routing, heatmaps and live data use.

A picture of a floor plan cannot tell a wall from a dimension line. A traced map can: walls block, doors connect, rooms have names, stairs join floors. That is why the order you trace in, and the names you give things, matter more than drawing speed.

1. 1
   Get the latest revision, one sheet per level

   Ask facilities for the current drawings, not the ones from the original build. A vector PDF exported from CAD is the cleanest input; scans work if they are sharp and straight. In Spatial Map a DWG becomes a picture of the drawing, which you trace like any other image.

2. 2
   Place it at true scale

   Set the drawing scale (for example 1:100) or the real width and height. Check it against two dimensions you know — a corridor width, a column spacing.

3. 3
   Pin it to the building

   Find the address on the map and rotate the plan until its outline sits on the building footprint. Real-world coordinates are what let positions from an RTLS land in the right room.

4. 4
   Stack the floors before you trace them

   Place every level’s plan and line them up on things that do not move between floors: stair cores, lift shafts, structural columns.

Placing a PDF floor plan at a known scale

Two habits save rework. Draw the walls before the doors: in Spatial Map a door snaps to the wall it lands on and cuts its own opening, which is also what lets a route pass through. And trace a stair or lift with the same footprint on each floor it connects, so the two ends meet. If you sketch rooms first and want walls around them, Magic walls builds a wall around every area you pick — adjacent rooms each get their own wall, so draw shared party walls by hand when you need a single clean line.

Every name you give is a key that data will be matched on. A probe reporting “CR-02” lands on the room called CR-02, not on “Cold room 2”. Decide the convention before you trace, and use the codes your WMS, CMDB, booking system or sensor platform already use.

In Spatial Map, AI Map (key A) works on an uploaded, aligned floor plan. It drafts walls, doors, racks, labels, areas, stairs, lifts and escalators for the whole floor or for a rectangle you drag (Part of the floor). Drafts appear on the map for review: you add all of them, or add or discard each kind, and drafts that match a shape already on the floor are skipped. Once added, they are ordinary shapes you edit like anything you drew. It is available on paid plans and the trial, with a monthly limit. How the recognition works is covered on the AI floor plan recognition page.

• Walls: closed where they should be, open at every door; no desks, shelving or hatching drawn as walls.
• Doors: set into a wall, on the right side, with nothing missing on the main routes and fire exits.
• Rooms: one area per room, names spelled as on your door signs and systems — fix misread text now.
• Stairs and lifts: present on every floor they serve, lined up with each other.
• Racks: the right count and orientation; the rack codes match the WMS.
• Scale: measure one long wall against the drawing.

If one part of the floor came out badly — a dense plant room, say — discard that kind and re-run on just that area with Part of the floor, or trace it by hand.

1. 1
   Look at it in 3D

   Tilt the map: missing walls and floating stairs are obvious from an angle.

2. 2
   Test a route across floors

   Ask for directions from a ground-floor entrance to an upper-floor room. If the route goes through a wall or never changes floor, a door or a stair is missing — see indoor wayfinding.

3. 3
   Link one data source

   Match one table to the rooms or racks by name. Rows that land nowhere point to naming gaps.

4. 4
   Share it

   Send a read-only link to the people who know the building best and ask what is wrong.

For the import side — PDF, DWG and images, scale and alignment — read floor plan to indoor map. You can try all of this on a 7-day free trial with up to five facilities and no card; Pro is $60 a month for up to four.