The ArcGIS Indoors team is excited to introduce a new extension, ArcGIS Indoors for AutoCAD, and a new web application, Floor Plan Editor. In addition, the ArcGIS Pro 3.2 release includes new Indoors tools and there are new workspace reservation capabilities in Indoors Viewer and Indoors Mobile in ArcGIS Online (October update) and ArcGIS Enterprise 11.2.
In this blog, we will introduce the new apps and enhancements to help you maintain your indoor data and manage your hybrid workplace.
First, let’s cover the two brand new offerings. Indoors for AutoCAD helps you minimize rework when you create your indoor data from CAD drawings. Floor Plan Editor allows you to make edits and add data to your floor plans directly in a web browser. It is designed for staff who are not trained to use professional desktop software like ArcGIS Pro or AutoCAD.
ArcGIS Indoors for AutoCAD (available in January 2024)
CAD floor plans often have linework gaps, missing text, or other conditions that affect data quality when you import to Indoors. ArcGIS Indoors for AutoCAD helps AutoCAD users locate hard-to-find conditions in CAD drawings including the following:
- Unclosed unit boundaries
- Self-intersecting polylines
- Missing unit names and use type text
- Non-unique unit names
- Non-standard use type values.
By fixing these issues in the CAD floor plans, you can save time on post-import quality control. This can also help reduce unnecessary rework when the CAD floor plans are updated during construction projects.
ArcGIS Indoors for AutoCAD is a new extension at ArcGIS for AutoCAD Version 430. It is expected to be available in January 2024.
Floor Plan Editor
Floor plan changes happen constantly across all your facilities to meet various needs. Staff well trained in tools like ArcGIS Pro or AutoCAD typically make these updates. The new Floor Plan Editor app allows Facilities or Operations staff who are not trained in GIS to make edits directly in a web browser.
In Floor Plan Editor you can modify floor plans to keep them up to date or create what-if scenarios to meet future needs. In addition to editing existing floor plans, you can add new data for buildings, floors, rooms, walls, furniture, and more. You can create floor plan data by drawing, tracing over an image, or adding feature from a palette.
Floor Plan Editor is new at ArcGIS Enterprise 11.2.
ArcGIS Pro 3.2
At ArcGIS Pro 3.2, we added three new geoprocessing tools to the Indoors toolbox. These tools help simplify data loading from CAD and IFC and update an Indoors workspace to the latest schema.
Import IFC To Indoor Dataset
While there is an existing tool to import Revit files to the Indoors model (Import BIM To Indoor Dataset), there has been increased demand to support IFC files. IFC is an open standard for BIM that is commonly used as a delivery format for building projects.
Import IFC To Indoor Dataset is a new tool in the Indoors toolbox that takes an IFC file as input and creates 2D features in the Indoors model.
You can optionally import a subset of an IFC file, by first running the Extract BIM File Floorplan tool to create 2D feature classes and providing them as input to the tool. If you provide floorplan layers, any selections on those layers are honored. This allows you to make targeted building updates, such as accounting for renovation on just a wing of a building.
Import CAD To Indoor Dataset
The new Import CAD To Indoor Dataset tool simplifies the data loading process and improves performance. You can choose to provide CAD input from CAD layer names or add CAD data to a map and provide map layers. This gives you increased control over which features the tool imports by honoring map selections and definition queries.
Upgrade Indoors Database
At ArcGIS Pro 3.2 the Indoors team released the Upgrade Indoor Database tool to upgrade existing Indoors workspaces to the latest schema.
This tool allows you to take advantage of the latest Indoors functionality without making manual updates to the Indoors schema. The tool adds schema items that are missing, including feature classes, tables, domains, fields, and attributes. It does not remove any existing schema items.
The Upgrade Indoors Database tool has two modes. The first is a report mode, which creates a text file of all updates that would be made to the workspace. The text file also includes any errors that you must resolve before updating the schema, such as schema locks.
The second mode actually makes schema changes to the input geodatabase to add all the necessary schema items.
You can run the tool against both file and enterprise geodatabases. If you have feature services published that reference an enterprise geodatabase, you must stop them on the server before you run the tool. With enterprise geodatabases, additional configuration may be required after updating the schema, such as re-enabling branch versioning.
ArcGIS Enterprise 11.2 and ArcGIS Online (October update)
ArcGIS Indoors introduced some highly requested capabilities for workspace reservations in ArcGIS Enterprise 11.2 and ArcGIS Online (October update).
Capacity-based office hotel bookings
Space planners may assign a large room as an office hotel meant for collaboration or repurpose an underutilized space. Such rooms can have several desks. The Indoors apps now honor room capacity and allow multiple people to book the same space for the same time. Reservation managers can book a multi-capacity space for each individual in a group if they are arriving onsite for collaboration.
For Microsoft 365, capacity is defined in the workspace mailbox settings by a Microsoft apps administrator. For the Indoors Reservations layer, you can use Space Planner to update the Capacity value of the desired spaces in the Units layer.
Recurring office hotel bookings
Remote employees who visit office on a fixed schedule can now make recurring bookings. You can choose between daily recurrence (when you visit an office for an entire week) or weekly recurrence (when you visit an office on certain days every week). Reservation managers can also make recurring office hotel bookings for others.
If you need to modify recurring bookings, you can edit or cancel either the entire series or a single occurence.
Recurring bookings are available for both Microsoft 365 (no configuration needed) and Indoors Reservation layer booking methods. If you are using the Reservations layer, it must have the new fields introduced in ArcGIS Pro 3.2.
ArcGIS Indoors for ArcGIS Enterprise on Kubernetes
ArcGIS Indoors web apps – Indoor Viewer, Space Planner, and Floor Plan Editor – are now available in ArcGIS Enterprise 11.2 on Kubernetes. Kubernetes provides scalability, resilience, and manageability to an ArcGIS Enterprise deployment. It also provides built-in high availability, flexibility to scale your infrastructure efficiently, and it reduces administrative overhead for deployments and upgrades. It helps separates IT administration and maintenance from GIS administration.
For further information on the product, visit the ArcGIS Indoors page. If you have any questions, visit or reach out via our Esri Community place.
About the authors
Gaurav Jobanputra
Sophie Frank
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