Fixing Duplicated Survey Maps

Learn why surveying on two copies of the same map can cause access points to appear on only one of them, and how to fix it.

Hamina assumes that when you're surveying multiple maps in a project, you're surveying different floors of the same building, not multiple copies of the same floor. Because of this assumption, when Hamina Onsite hears an access point above -60 dBm, it places that access point on whichever floor/map was active at the time, on the theory that the loudest floor is the floor the access point is actually located on.

This means that if you survey Copy A and Hamina hears a new access point above -60 dBm, that access point is placed on Copy A only. When Copy B is surveyed, you'll still get measurements and heatmaps from the access point, but Hamina won't place a location pin for it (since the AP has already been located on another map)

Under normal circumstances, Hamina will move an AP to the appropriate floor, if the AP is heard at a better signal strength. For example, when surveying Floor 1, it might place a sufficiently loud access point on Floor 1. When you survey Floor 2, if it hears the access point at a higher signal strength, it will move the access point to Floor 2. In the early stages of a survey of a multi-floor building, you might see many access points placed on the wrong floor. As you survey additional floors, Hamina will move more and more APs to the correct floors as there is more survey data added to the project.

The issue usually becomes apparent when comparing the two map copies side-by-side, where an access point location is present on one map, but is missing from the other map.

This issue does not affect the Simulation View in Hamina Network Planner. While having duplicates of a map can negatively affect things like the Bill of Materials, having two versions of the same map in the Simulation View can be useful for comparison work or other tasks in the predictive modeling process.

Fixing a Duplicate Survey Map

In Hamina Network Planner:

1. Open the project, and make a duplicate of the project to have as a backup

2. Identify the two (or more) maps that are copies of the same map.

3. Choose a map to throw away, and switch to it.

4. Use the Survey paths tool to delete all of the survey paths from the map that you will throw away.

5. Switch to the map that you want to keep.

6. Slightly move one of the survey points on the map that you want to keep. This will cause Hamina to recompute the access point locations. They should appear after just a second or two.

7. Optionally (to limit confusion in the project), remove the extra copies of the map.

Going forward, consider surveying only a single copy of a map. Multiple Hamina Onsite users can survey a map at the same time with no negative consequences.