Buildings/Floor-plans

To specify a building or floor-plan database, select Databases>Buildings/Floor-plans from the main menu bar. The building database may consist of several files, all of which must have the “.mcs” extension. The database can have general use in all the programs to display the data as part of a map, and if selected for use on the Basic Studies/Propagation Models screen, may be used as part of the signal studies for several propagation model types.

In the Building/Floor Plan Database dialog box, enter the directory path name where the building database files are stored. Each file must be in a valid EDX building file format using the file name extension “.mcs”. The complete file format is described in Appendix C.

If using the DAS Design Module, you may also check the Use DAS Design files option and point to the folder where your Building Editor “.mdl” building project is stored. 

There is also a check box option for pre-processing the building data. Often when creating a data file describing a floor plan, wall junctions are not completely closed. Small gaps of this type can cause problems for highly detailed propagation models like ray-tracing, that explicitly consider every aspect of the building or floor plan data. Pre-processing will close such gaps if they are smaller than 0.1 meter and it is also used to break up walls into segments connecting junctions. Each time a wall encounters a new juncture, a new segment is created. This pre-process option should only be used for ray-tracing and usually only indoor data files will require this processing. Also, it should only be used where necessary, since it takes some time to carry out this pre-processing step.

If you need to define wall material types for your study, you must enter the path for the Wall material type data file. A default file that you can edit is supplied with the software. Click on the Edit wall material type file button to bring up the dialog box. This file is edited in much the same way as the land use (clutter) attenuation file. In the top half of the screen, you can add and delete wall types by selecting a row and deleting it, or adding a new row at the bottom. When a Wall Types entry is highlighted, you can assign it a name and give it surface roughness and thickness values. At the bottom half of the screen, the parameters for Wall Type Data can be set for various frequencies, conductivity, permittivity and attenuation. Again, highlight a cell and make your changes. Once you have made the changes, click the Save and Close button.