Your standard, agreed before we scan.
Most drawing problems aren’t measurement problems. They’re format problems. The geometry is fine and the file still won’t load, or it loads and the areas don’t match the space records. So we settle the standard first, name it in the proposal, and check the file against it before anything ships.
Three ways, and any of them works.
You send a spec
A written CAD standard, a layer table, a template file. This is the cleanest path and the fastest to quote.
You send a drawing that already works
If you have one file that imports correctly today, we match it. Layer names, text styles, block conventions, the lot.
We ask
If nothing is written down, we work through it on a call. Twenty minutes covers layer convention, room numbering, how you handle shafts and shared corridors, and which area standard you’re measuring to.
If the answer is that no standard exists yet, that’s worth knowing before the scan rather than after. We’ll propose one and you can adopt it or overwrite it.
The parts that break, handled.
Closed polylines
Every room bounded by a closed polyline on a consistent layer. This is the part that most often breaks an import, and it’s the part that’s invisible until it does.
Room numbering that matches your records
Not a numbering scheme we invented. The one your space inventory already uses, so the join works without a lookup table.
Attributes on the geometry
Room number, room type, area, and ceiling height carried in the drawing itself rather than in a spreadsheet next to it.
A consistent layer convention
Yours if you have one. AIA or NCS if you’d rather work from a published convention. Documented either way, so the next person to open the file knows what they’re looking at.
Where drawings quietly disagree.
Area is where drawings quietly disagree with each other, and it’s usually a boundary decision rather than a math error. We measure to BOMA, and the decisions that need making get made with you before drafting starts:
- Rentable versus usable, and which one your reports run on
- Where the boundary sits against exterior walls, interior partitions, and glass
- How shared corridors, shafts, and mechanical space get treated
- Which BOMA standard applies, since office, gross areas, and multi-unit each measure differently
None of this is exotic. It’s just decisions that get made by default when nobody makes them deliberately, and then they show up in a chargeback report two years later.
Delivered into Eptura and Archibus.
For anything else, including FM:Systems, Planon, Tririga, or something built in house, we work from your import spec. The mechanics don’t change much between platforms. Closed polylines, a consistent layer convention, room numbering that matches your records, attributes on the geometry.
Send the spec and we build to it. Send a file that already imports and we match it.
What we need from you.
Short list, and only the first one is required.
- The building address and approximate square footage, to quote · required
- Your CAD standard, a template, or a working sample file, if one exists
- Your room numbering scheme or a current space list
- Which area standard your reports are built on
- A site contact and access window
Anything missing, we work it out on the intake call.