🏗️Walls
Learn how to draw walls on maps with Hamina Network Planner.
Adding walls to the simulation is one of the most important parts of creating a predictive model for a wireless network. Adding walls (and attenuating objects) enables Hamina to calculate where signal strength will be attenuated (decreased or blocked) on the map.
Drawing Walls
Walls can come from three sources:
Automatic drawing, using AI-detected walls, with the user selecting wall and door materials. AI-detected walls are pre-applied without any input from the user, and then optionally accepted/confirmed with the user selecting major material types.
Automatic drawing, using CAD/PDF layers, with the user selecting materials for each layer.
Manual drawing.
AI-Detected Walls
When an eligible indoor floorplan is uploaded, Hamina Network Planner uses machine learning to automatically detect walls and doors. The AI-detected walls will briefly appear in blue on the map, and the "Walls automatically traced" notification will appear.
The walls are applied to the simulation immediately and without any more input from the user, but can be removed if necessary. Most users will proceed to Auto-draw walls, which allows for door and wall material assignment, accepts the detected walls, and draws them on the map for further manipulation and editing.
Compatibility
Hamina Network Planner will automatically detect and draw walls on indoor floorplans such as offices, schools, and warehouses. In other environments such as stadiums, outdoor maps, or maps of low quality (like those that are meant for indoor navigation or fire escapes, and aren't for architectural or engineering purposes), manual drawing will be required.
Auto-Draw Walls with AI
On eligible floorplans, walls will automatically be traced without any input from the user. The last step of the process is to accept or "draw" them.
Upload a new map to Hamina Network Planner.
Hamina Network Planner will attempt to detect the scale of the map, as indicated by the Analyzing Scale... message next the scale marker.
Once the scale analysis is complete, the scale marker will return to normal, but with a robot emoji 🤖, letting you know that the map is using an automatic scale.
Next, Hamina Network Planner will auto-trace the walls. When the tracing has been completed, a sparkle emoji ✨ will appear on the Walls tool. At this point, open the Walls tool.
The Walls pane will appear, where you can select between Draw and Auto-draw. With Auto-draw selected, you can change the material type for auto-detected walls and doors, and see a preview of the automatic walls on the map. When you're ready, click the Auto-draw walls button.
Further assign specific wall types by using the Edit tool to click, drag, and select groups of walls. Then use the Edit Walls pane or hotkeys to assign walls with hotkeys as desired.
Removing Automatically Traced Walls
In some cases, walls that are automatically traced might be counterproductive. To remove them:
Point to the Walls & Objects group in the toolbar, and select the Walls tool.
In the Walls pane, the Auto-draw tab will be selected. Click the Trash button to delete the automatically traced walls from the map.
CAD/PDF Layers
Hamina Network Planner can automatically draw walls with CAD and PDF files that include vectors. The primary advantage of this is that each layer can be assigned with a unique material, but requires very high-quality source files, and often results in messier walls.
While still supported in Hamina Network Planner, the performance of Automatic Wall Drawing with CAD/PDF vectors has almost completely been surpassed by the performance of Automatic Wall Drawing with AI-Detected Walls, which is now recommended over CAD/PDF Layers in nearly all circumstances (even when a CAD/PDF file is provided).
Compatibility
To use Automatic Wall Drawing with CAD/PDF Layers in Hamina Network Planner, source CAD/PDF files must meet several specific requirements.
Wall types must be on separate layers, such as interior walls, exterior walls, windows, doors, and stairwell walls. Often, we see CAD and PDF files that have everything (including walls, furniture, and fixtures) on one layer. When this happens, you can't assign materials to separate layers, so Hamina Network Planner can't automatically draw walls.
For PDF files, the floor plans must be drawn with vector graphics. It is not uncommon to see PDF files that use bitmap graphics, which the Auto-Draw Walls tool cannot use. The floor plans in the PDF file must be drawn with vector graphics (which probably means that the PDF was produced with a CAD tool).
Some CAD and PDF files are simply too complicated. For example, they might draw many parallel lines to represent one wall. While Hamina Network Planner tries to account for this, it might not be able to determine where the wall is.
Some CAD or PDF files are just too large. If you're working in a warehouse or manufacturing environment, you might find that the environment is just too big for Hamina to handle. Fortunately, those environments typically have lots of repetitive shelves (which are better drawn, copied, and pasted with attenuating objects), or they have relatively few walls that are in straight lines, and are easy to draw.
Import CAD/PDF Layers
It's important to assign materials to all of the relevant layers before importing walls. The Auto-draw walls tool creates a "skeleton" of the walls, and connects them all together. Importing one layer at a time will leave gaps in the "skeleton", making for a less-than-ideal import.
In the Simulation view, in the toolbar, select the Walls tool.
In the Walls pane, in the Auto-draw tab, select CAD/PDF layers.
Click the Add layers... field, and a scrollable list of layers found in the file will appear.
From the list, mouse over the layer to preview it. The layer will highlight in blue on the map.
Select the desired layer, and it will be added to the list of layers to use for automatic drawing.
A material will automatically be assigned to the layer, based on the name of the layer. Click the Layer selection menu to switch it to a different material, as desired. The layer will highlight in magenta on the map, so you can see that it has been assigned.
Repeat the process for all relevant layers on the map, ignoring irrelevant layers such as fixtures, furniture, and plants. We recommend assigning materials to building layers such as:
Interior walls
Exterior walls
Windows
Doors
Stairwell walls
Once a material is assigned to each relevant layer, click the blue Import Walls button.
View the results, and see if the Auto-draw walls tool did a good job with your specific CAD or PDF file.
Manual Walls
Point to the Walls & Objects group in the toolbar, and select the Walls tool.
In the Walls pane on the right, select the Draw tab for manual drawing.
Activate the desired material by clicking on it in the list, or by pressing the associated hotkey.
On the map canvas, left-click once to start drawing a wall segment.
Left-click again to place the other end of the wall segment, completing the segment.
Continue left-clicking to chain multiple wall segments together.
Right-click to stop drawing wall segments.
While drawing walls, hold down the Space bar and move the mouse to pan. Since this panning method doesn't require any mouse clicks, it works great during wall drawing.
Customizing Wall Profiles
While Hamina includes some pre-set wall profiles to get you started, it's a great idea to change the existing profiles, or create your own to make the predictive model as accurate as possible.
To customize wall profiles:
Point to the Walls & Objects group, and select the Walls tool.
In the Walls pane on the right, click on the Wall Profile Editor button in the upper right.
The Wall Editor window will appear. From here, you can:
Edit existing wall profiles (click on the profile to edit it)
Duplicate wall profiles to create your own (click the Duplicate button in the wall profile)
Create your own (click the Add a custom wall button)
To edit a profile, select it from the list, or select the Add new wall type button at the bottom to create a new profile. On the right, you can change the following Wall Profile attributes:
Material name - The friendly name of the wall profile.
Material type - Identifies the type of material in Hamina Network Planner, and affects the attenuation of the wall for frequencies outside of 5 GHz (using the 5 GHz attenuation that you input as an anchor). This also controls the material color in the 3D view.
Shortcut key
Attenuation at 5 GHz - How much the material will attenuate 5 GHz. See Wall Attenuation for details.
Top height from floor - The height of the upper edge of the material. If left empty, "Ceiling height" will automatically be selected, which is:
The height of the floor, as defined in the Align Floors tool
or the tallest object on the map
or a minimum height based on the environment type
Bottom height from floor - The height of the lower edge of the material.
Dynamic attenuation per frequency - Enables automatic adjustment of attenuation, depending on the frequency band. See Dynamic Attenuation for details.
Transparent in 3D - Makes the material transparent in the 3D view. Useful for windows, or making materials clear to improve visibility.
Fill top & bottom - Fills the empty space above and below an object with material from an adjacent wall. See Fill Top and Bottom for details.
Color - Changes the color of the material in the 2D view. In 3D, the color is determined by the selected Material type.
Fill Top and Bottom
For materials with a defined bottom height from floor and/or top height from floor, this option files above and below the material using an adjacent wall as the material type. For example, a window profile with Fill top & bottom enabled that is surrounded by brick will be modeled with brick below and above the window:
With Fill top & bottom disabled for various window and door profiles, the door and window wall segments will have empty space above and/or below them. While not desirable for most doors and windows, this can be useful for creating ceiling beams, headers above open doors, and other building geometry.
Wall Attenuation
Hamina Network Planner doesn't utilize wall thickness, instead accepting attenuation in dB (decibels) as an input value. Walls are essentially modeled as flat planes, so the angle that the signal travels through the wall will not affect how much the signal is attenuated.
Dynamic Attenuation
Hamina Network Planner accepts Attenuation in 5 GHz, and automatically calculates attenuation for other frequency bands (such as 2.4 and 6 GHz for Wi-Fi, or the various private cellular bands).
The calculation for frequencies other than 5 GHz is based on a curve, depending on the selected material type, from a ITU (International Telecommunication Union) research paper where RF propagation through materials was thoroughly tested. 5 GHz serves as the anchor for the curve, so adjusting the attenuation for 5 GHz moves the curve up and down. Lower frequencies (like 2.4 GHz) will see less attenuation, and slightly higher frequencies (such as 6 GHz) will see slightly more attenuation.
This greatly simplifies the data input process for the model. All that is needed to determine a wall's attenuation for any technology or frequency (including private cellular) is an inexpensive 5 GHz wireless router or access point, and any 5 GHz Wi-Fi client that can measure signal strength. See more in Measuring Wall Attenuation.
When the project is viewed in 3D, the wall thickness is adjusted to represent the attenuation of the walls. This effect is purely visual, and does not affect the simulation.
Measuring Wall Attenuation
While the built-in defaults in Hamina are a good starting point, it's a great idea to take measurements of the walls in the real world, and input them into Hamina to increase the accuracy of the design. Modifying walls in one project does not affect your other Hamina projects.
Use a piece of hardware to create a 5 GHz network. This could be as complex as an AP-on-a-stick setup, or as simple as a 5 GHz hotspot on a smartphone. The idea is simply to create beacons in the 5 GHz band.
Post the AP 3 to 5 meters away from the wall that you want to measure. Signal strength tends to drop off quickly within the first two meters, making it more difficult to get accurate measurements.
Use a device that can measure RSSI, such as a Wi-Fi scanner (Wi-Fi Explorer Pro, MetaGeek inSSIDer), real-time packet analysis tool (MetaGeek App), or handheld Wi-Fi measurement device (Fluke AirCheck G1, or NetAlly AirCheck G2/G3), or our very own Hamina Onsite + Oscium Nomad. Take a signal strength measurement on the close side of the wall. Note the signal strength.
Take a signal strength measurement on the far side of the wall, and make note of it.
Subtract the first signal strength from the second. For example, if you saw -60 dBm on the close side, and -68 dBm on the far side, then you saw 8 dB of loss.
If you'd like, take several measurements and average them out before inputting them into Hamina. The more measurements you take, the more accurate Hamina's predictions will be, overall.
We recommend identifying the 3 to 5 most common types of walls in the building, getting measurements for them, and inputting them into Hamina Network Planner. That should give you reasonable accuracy, without taking too much time gathering data.
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