Indoor mapping for UK stadiums, conference centres, campuses and museums

A UK estate rarely has one tidy set of plans. Newer buildings come with DWG files from the architect or the fit-out contractor; older ones may exist only as PDF sheets, and a listed building’s best plan can be a scan. Spatial Map takes all three. A DWG (AutoCAD R2004 to R2018) is placed at true size in metres or millimetres. A PDF sheet is matched to its paper size, such as A1 or A3, and you pick the drawing scale or enter a known width. A PNG or JPG scan is sized to the building’s real dimensions. DXF needs to be saved as DWG or plotted to PDF first.

On top of the plan you draw what visitors and staff need: rooms, halls, doors, walls, stairs, lifts and escalators, on every floor. The general workflow is on our indoor mapping software page; this one is about the buildings UK teams map.

On a matchday or concert night, the map has to work for people who do not know the building: stewards on their first shift, catering agency staff, contractors. A share link opens in any phone browser with the floors and layers you choose — gates, turnstiles, first-aid points, concessions — and expires after the event. Operations keep the full map with turnstile scans and crowd counters bound to the gates and concourses, as in the Crown Park demo.

Conference and exhibition centres change between build-up and breakdown. Keep halls, loading bays and registration as permanent shapes and redraw the booth blocks for each show, so exhibitor bookings and session-room occupancy bind to the current layout, as in the Lakeside demo.

University estates teams look after teaching rooms, labs, prep rooms and stores spread across many buildings. In Spatial Map each building is a facility in one workspace; rooms carry their timetable, lab equipment its bookings and chemical containers their store, as in the two-floor Westbrook University demo. The same map serves open days, where a share link helps visitors find a lecture theatre.

In offices, hybrid working has turned meeting rooms and shared equipment into the questions facilities teams get most. The Harborview demo shows a three-floor office with meeting rooms and space use, an asset register, equipment check-out and work orders on one plan.

A shopping centre map serves two audiences. Shoppers want units, toilets, exits and the lift to their car park level; centre management wants service corridors, delivery yards, vacant units and footfall by entrance. Both live in one facility: public layers on the visitor link, operational layers for the team.

Museums add conservation. The three-floor Production Museum demo colours galleries by occupancy and climate, places tagged objects and shows cameras and safety equipment on the same floors. Lenders often ask for environmental records when they loan objects; Spatial Map keeps every reading as row history and exports reports, while your collections and conservation systems remain the record.

The Navigate button builds a walking route around walls and through doors with turn-by-turn directions, in the viewer and on share links. Routes stay on one floor. Lifts, stairs and escalators are drawn in 3D and shown with wayfinding icons, so a visitor can see where the lift is and switch levels with the floor switcher. Spatial Map does not plan step-free journeys between floors, and we would rather say so than overpromise.

What you can do is make access information visible: draw and name accessible toilets, Changing Places facilities, quiet rooms, accessible entrances and the lifts that serve each level, so the map shows visitors where they are. See the docs on wayfinding and lifts and escalators.