Planning the Nortel WLAN 2300 System 85Nortel WLAN—Management Software 2300 Series Reference GuideImporting or Drawing Floor DetailsYou can add information for a floor by importing a drawing of the floor or by using WLAN Management Software’sgraphics tools to draw the floor.After you import or draw the floor, you need to specify the RF characteristics of the floor, by specifying the attenuationof obstacles such as walls, doors, windows, and so on. The attenuation of an object indicates how much the object affectsan 802.11 radio signal. WLAN Management Software uses the attenuation information when calculating how many APsyou need and where to place them in order to provide the desired wireless coverage.The following sections describe how to import or draw a floor. For information about specifying the RF characteristicsof the floor, see “Specifying the RF Characteristics of a Floor” (page 100).Importing a Drawing of a FloorYou can import a drawing of your floor plan into WLAN Management Software. WLAN Management Softwaresupports the following file types:• AutoCAD drawing (DWG), a native binary format used by AutoCAD. You can import the following versions: R13,R14, R2000. Use R2000 if available.• Drawing Interchange Format (DXF), an ASCII-based interchange format used for multi-vendor interoperability.You can import the following versions: R12, R13, R14, R2000. Use R2000 if available.• Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) (.gif)• Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) (.jpeg, .jpg)WLAN Management Software cannot import files in Visio format. However, you can export a Visio file to a DXF orJPG file, then import that file into WLAN Management Software.You can also draw a floor plan in WLAN Management Software if you do not have a drawing of your floor in one of thesupported file formats.File RecommendationsFor optimal results, use a DWG or DXF drawing. These types of drawings are made of vector graphics line objects(lines), which you can easily convert into RF obstacles after importing the drawing into WLAN Management Software.In addition, the drawing objects are usually grouped together and organized by layers, enabling the display and manipu-lation of similar objects such as walls, doors, and windows.Drawings in DXF format sometimes import more easily into WLAN Management Software. However, Nortel recom-mends that you obtain copies of the drawing in both DWG and DXF formats if possible, so that you can try the otherformat if the first format you try does not import easily.A GIF or JPG file is a raster graphics file (a screenshot or background image), which is not made of lines. To add RFobstacle information, you must manually draw the obstacles on top of the image.For optimal performance, use files that are around 1 MB in size or less. (A DXF file is generally about 3 times the size ofa DWG file for the same drawing.)You can reduce the file size for a drawing by pruning unneeded information from the drawing, as described below.
