We did this a couple of years ago - we shipped CAD drawings of the building being built to our vendor with info about construction materials, room use, etc. They gave us back a detailed layout of APs. Once installed, they came back and did 2 surveys - one with the building empty and one later with the building under normal use. This was all part of the bid for wireless for the building. I will say the initial design was pretty accurate; we had to make minor changes because we forgot to include ceiling information, and some were moved from hard ceiling locations to dropped ceiling locations for easier use.
Doing this earlier in the project allowed the cabling for wireless APs to be included in the network cabling bid so there already was a cable (with a generous service loop) in the ceiling when we were ready for installation. The vendor also pre-configured the APs on our controllers prior to installation for smoother install. This allowed us to do the mounting of APs ourselves; two people put up 65 APs in about a day and a half and all were working correctly when they were done. Thomas Carter Network & Operations Manager Austin College From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU] On Behalf Of Eriks Rugelis Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2016 9:12 AM To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU Subject: [WIRELESS-LAN] WLAN planning strategy for new buildings? I would like to hear opinions from this community about how to approach WLAN planning for new construction projects. We are in the midst of a constructing a series of new buildings and I am not pleased with the early results. 1. Do you take a stab at a best-guess predictive survey from construction drawings (AutoCAD) and then do post-build survey and adjustments? (Can result in sub-optimal initial deployment requiring re-work. How do you estimate the re-work cost?) 2. Do you wait until the new building is standing to create a post-build survey and deployment? (Can be costly in terms of implementation budget as well as elapsed time to running service.) FWIW, we have several years of internal experience with Ekahau Site Survey for predictive surveys. However, our ESS-literate staff resources are spread very thin. So far, we have had trouble identifying competent contractors to hire for creation predictive surveys on our behalf. It seems most of them do not understand high-density client workloads such as are found in typical university buildings. Worse, some do not really understand Wi-Fi at all. 3. If you use ESS: a) Can you describe your experience with making use of its auto-import feature for reading AutoCAD files? b) Can you describe your experience/success with obtaining AutoCAD models (from your facilities dept.) which classify building materials into unique layers to ease auto-import by ESS? The latest Big Think in the construction industry is BIM (Building Information Modeling.) Our Facilities Development department has adopted AutoDesk's Revit tool for creating/managing BIM for new buildings. While Revit has an export function to create AutoCAD .dwg files, there is a terrifying degree of flexibility in how this export can be done. 4. Do you have any experience in creating AutoCAD exports from Revit BIM which are suitable for import by Ekahau Site Survey? Thanks in advance for your input. Eriks "In God we trust; all others must bring data." - attributed to W. Edwards Deming --- Eriks Rugelis | Manager, Network Development | University Information Technology 010 Steacie Science and Engineering Library | York University | 4700 Keele St. , Toronto ON Canada M3J 1P3 T: +1.416.736.5756 | F: +1.416.736.5830 | er...@yorku.ca<mailto:er...@yorku.ca> | www.yorku.ca<http://www.yorku.ca/> York UIT will NEVER send unsolicited requests for passwords or other personal information via email. Messages requesting such information are fraudulent and should be deleted.<http://www.yorku.ca/> ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
