Creating Map Tiles

Floorplan map layers are created by taking a cleaned up digital image of each floor and rendering it into a map tile using MapTiler's software. The floorplan layer is then imported into NowForce and can be displayed as a map layer.

Preparing Digital Images

To render the building floorplans as map layers each individual floor must be generated into a digital format image.

The floorplans must be in either JPG or PNG format.

Once you have created your digital image it must be cleaned.

To clean your digitized floorplan

  1. Remove all labels, notes, roads, legends from the image.
  2. Change the background of the image to transparent.
  3. Crop image to the external walls.

An example of a correctly rendered image with no visible labels or extra roads, and cropped to a building’s external walls is shown below.

Below is an example of an incorrectly prepared image:

Creating Map Tiles in MapTiler

To Create Map Tiles

Once you have downloaded and installed MapTiler Desktop Start edition:

  1. Launch MapTiler.

  2. Select Standard Tiles.

    You can follow a MapTiler tutorial here.

  3. Select the cleaned up floorplan image that you prepared in advance.
  4. Set the Coordinate System to WGS84 and click SET.

  5. Select ASSIGN LOCATION VISUALLY.

  6. Zoom in on the world map, to the location of the building you want to map.
  7. In the right-hand pane, select one corner of the floor plan, and then select the exact physical location on the map in the left-hand side pane.
  8. Repeat this for three additional points on the floor map.

  9. Adjust the anchors by dragging the dots you marked to the precise position.

    10. For the full list of screen controls see this functionality list.

  10. Click SAVE.

  11. Click CONTINUE.

  12. Select Folder and a Zoom from setting of 16 to 22, and click RENDER.

    To ensure your floorplan displays correctly on the NowForce Map you must select a Zoom from setting of 16 to 22.

  13. Create a new folder named “Floor X” with the floor number of the floorplan you are processing (e.g. “Floor 1”).

    14. Once the rendering is completed, a sub-folder for each zoom level (17, 18, 19, 20) appears within the "Floor X" folder.

  14. Open the googlemaps.html output file to check that the floorplans align correctly on top of the building. You can test the different zoom levels views.

  15. Repeat these steps for all the floors in the building.