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Feature 101: Map Upload Portal

Oct 1, 2021

3 min read

By: Lucy Bragg

Powered through a single CMS application, the Mappedin platform provides end-to-end solutions for creating, maintaining, and visualizing your property maps. With our Map Upload Portal, we're making it easier to convert existing property floor plans into a 3D digital asset that can support a variety of use cases with maximum automation and limited human intervention.

Importing CAD Files Into Our CMS

Our platform is a central management location for all of your property data; a place to edit and maintain your indoor maps. In order to create a visually appealing 3D map, we start by importing your 2D floor plans into our CMS. 

While most of our customers use the Mappedin CMS as a single source of truth, a subset of our customers manage their floor plans in Autodesk’s AutoCAD. Originally, CAD files couldn’t be imported directly into our system, and CAD users would have to duplicate their efforts by updating their CAD files and then repeating their map update in Mappedin.

Thus, we asked ourselves, if customers are using CAD files, how can we process them into our CMS without having to duplicate the effort? How can we make it easy for the CAD user? We created our Map Upload Portal from the ground up to address this problem and make the process of converting CAD files into a digital map seamless. 

What is the Map Upload Portal?

The Map Upload Portal allows us to take a CAD file of a venue and seamlessly import it into our CMS, so that a CAD user can utilize Mappedin’s system to edit and deploy their maps. With a straightforward UI, you simply log into our CMS, navigate to the Mapping Tab, and click “Import CAD” to upload your files. 

The CAD processor imports all geometry included in a CAD file to generate a copy of your building layout in our Map Editor. Only the layers you've defined as important to Mappedin will import into our system - the rest are ignored. The processor is able to import all ID’s associated with the geometries and assign them within our system automatically. The data is imported into a draft mode to enable any additional edits, and allows for a safe review before the map goes live. 

Why Did We Build It?

Most of our customers prefer making their map edits in our user-friendly CMS, but some facility managers continue to manage their maps in AutoCAD. In order to make maintaining maps in CMS an easier process for the CAD user, we built this Map Upload Portal feature. 

We wanted to service different types of users and customers to ensure that their workflow isn’t disrupted by working with Mappedin. Customers can continue to use CAD files as their source of truth, while reaping the benefits of our indoor mapping platform. 

Through map digitization, you can layer pathways and wayfinding onto your venue maps to enable indoor navigation capabilities. With our easy-to-use Map Editor tools, you can make changes to your maps in real-time, enabling an up-to-date and accurate representation of your space. Moreover, these maps can be deployed to all consumer-facing applications, including web apps, mobile apps, directories, and more. 

This ensures that our clients can continue to use our platform without changing how their internal team workflows function on a daily basis. Prioritizing ease-of-use, we continue to support our customers and provide them with the tools they need to simplify their workflow and ultimately maintain their maps. 

Contact us to learn more about the Map Upload Portal, or how you can create an indoor mapping experience using our flexible platform and editor tools.