Floorplan and network mapping software

[bondbill2k2]

Im looking at creating a floorplan for the entire school with all networking details, points, cabs and computers labeled, both for my refrence and future refrence that ill be printing out on A3.

 

Could anyone recommend any software to use for this?

[teejay]

Visio is good for this, you can also link it to an existing asset database to pull equipment details from if you have one.

[mb2k01]

I guess it might depend on your background / experience in using certain applications, but I would probably opt for AutoCAD or maybe Google Sketchup.

If you are looking less along the lines of CAD/scale drawings then to be honest, most vector drawing packages?

 

For the floorplan side of things, it might be worth asking your LA for floorplans. Most LA's would have them in some form of electronic format which might mean you can export in to something? (A long time ago I did this and got given what appeared to be corrupt AutoCAD files, which I managed to get most of the data from and imported in to Corel Draw - bit of a mission, but saved me time in the long run!)

 

**Edit** Visio is a great shout teejay - should have throught of that one

[bondbill2k2]

Google sketup is prob the best idea, I dont plan on it being 100% to scale or being of great detail just enough to use for refrence now and then if needed and get a better understanding of the layout.

[creese]

I like Sketchup, just had a quick play. I used to work in AutoCAD but it's not worth buying for what I need to do at home.

[dhicks]

Im looking at creating a floorplan for the entire school with all networking details, points, cabs and computers labeled, both for my refrence and future refrence that ill be printing out on A3.

 

I use Inkscape for this - vector-based, so scales to whatever size you want, and lets you draw separate layers, so you can have different overlays showing different things on the same floorplan. If your existing plans are in some bitmap format, Inkscape has a quite good auto-trace-bitmap option, although the layers feature does also make manually drawing vector floorplans over the bitmap ones quite easy, too. Handily, Inkscape is also free, and uses SVG as its native format, so you can display the vector files right in your webbrowser.

Edited February 8, 2011 by dhicks

[mb2k01]

I use Inkscape for this .....

 

A huge thanks to you for this - I had never heard of it until your mention, but it looks awesome. The fact it is opensource makes it even more of a find!

[bondbill2k2]

Ohh ill take a look at inkscape, thanks dhicks!

[IanT]

I've always used Viso, just done an entire building with visio creating the cab layouts.