The path editor is the section, inside the MazeMap admin tool, where you are able to create paths, edit paths or delete paths. Every single path which is showing on your live map will be based on the network inside the path editor. This is an introduction of the editor and it will give you a brief description of all the different tools and sections.

Where do you find the path editor?

The path editor is located in the campus overview of the admin tool, the main page of your campus. To navigate to the path editor, please click on “Paths”.

Open

This, will lead you to the path network of your campus which will look similar to the following one:

Open

Please watch the video below for instructions about how to get to the path editor!

Edit Paths

When starting to edit paths the affected paths will turn green on the map. This applies for edits as well as newly created paths. Deleted paths will disappear from the map and will not turn green. All changes will counted on the left hand side. While newly created paths will be listed and counted under “Created”, every deleted path will be listed under “Deleted”. In addition, edited paths will be counted under both. This is because by editing a path, you will basically delete a path and create a new one. Therefore, an edit will be counted under “Created” and “Deleted”.

In addition, there are three buttons placed in this section which will be explained below:

Save changes

To confirm your edits or deletions of paths (within a session), please click on the “Save Changes”-button. This will basically save the last changes and implement them within the tool. Your changes can not be reversed after a click on this button.

Clear changes

In the case you want to undo your recent changes/ deletions (within a session), you can do this by clicking on the “Clear changes”-button.

Publish Map

The “Publish Map”-button will publish the recent changes so they will appear on the live map. Remember to click on “Save Changes” first before you can continue with the “Publish Map”-button.

You basically confirm the changes first and publish them afterwards. The changes will not appear on the live map when you forget to click on “Save Changes” (because your changes would not be implemented then).

All the details above will also be explained in the following video again:

Building

In the “Building”-section on the left-hand side, you can select a building (or the outdoor area) within your campus. When entering the path editor the “Outdoors” path network is showing by default. In other words, it will show you the path network of the area outside of the building or the buildings. When clicking on “Outdoors” a dropdown menu will open, which includes all existing buildings within a campus.

If you want to switch to a path network inside a specific building, please click on the dropdown menu and select the corresponding building. You will see that the camera will automatically zoom into the chosen building and now you will be able to edit the path network of this building.

To return or to switch to another building, please chose another option in the dropdown menu.

The following video will give you a detailed overview over the “Building”-section.

Test Published Paths

The path editor allows you to test the path network directly after you published it. The test will show you exactly how a path between two points will look like on the live map (use.mazemap).

In this way, you skip jumping between the live map and the path editor when a path does not look like it suppose to be.

For detailed instructions about how to use this tool, please follow this link: Test Published Paths

Path Problems

On the left hand side you will find a section which shows you critical paths. This section is called “Path problems” and will count all critical paths within in a campus. In the best case it would look like the following:

This means the count would be “0” and you will find the note “No path-related problems found” in this section.

If there is a problem within the path network the section could for instance look like this:

You can see that the count is “1” because there is at least one component within the path network which is critical. For instance, this could be an “Unconnected component”, between two floors or two rooms. A specified error message will explain you the cause of the issue and by clicking on the issue you should get directed to the critical path.

After editing, creating or deleting path it is always good to double check the accuracy of the path network by pushing the “Refresh problems”-button. After a short loading time the button will become green or red. Green, when there are no problems occurring within the path network.

And red when a problem or several problems occur within the path network.

Delete all paths

The path editor allows you to delete the whole path network of a single floor (inside a building) at once. In this way you could start to create it from scratch again.

You can find a detailed description of how to delete one or more paths here: How to delete one or more paths?

Quick Path Tools

The “Quick Path Tools” will provide you with the tools to create, edit or delete paths. It includes also editing path behaviours and getting some path information. This section will give you a brief overview over the tools:

Select/ Move

The “Select/ Move”-tool is selected by default when you navigating into the path editor. On the one hand, it will allow you to select either a path or a node or on the other hand to move the position of a node.

When selecting a path (by clicking on it) the path will be highlighted in yellow and a window with the path properties will open. It is also possible to delete a selected path inside the path properties. If you want to read more about the “Path Properties”, please follow this link: What is a path?

Instead of selecting the whole path you can also just select a node. This will open a small window in the right corner with the “Node”-properties.

In addition, you will also be able to click on a single node and move it to another spot on the map. To do so please select a node and drag it to the spot you want it to be placed. Confirm the new position by clicking on a spot on the map.

Draw Path

Manual Path Generation

Selecting the “Draw Paths”-tool will give you the chance to draw one or more new paths. For further explanation, please click here: How do I create a path?

Automatic Path Generation

In path tool we also have an option of automatic path generation which is visible on the left menu bar.

It has 4 different options:

• Generate paths on active floor - This option generates paths only on the selected floorplan. Let’s choose the empty floorplan (because this option is enabled only when no manual changes have been made on the floorplan) and demontrate this option below.

Now choose the option Generate paths on active floor and see what happens.

As you can see new (green) paths were created on the floorplan. Automatic Path Generation works similar to the system in map editor - it creates paths only in rooms with door thresholds.

• Generate paths on floors in building - This option works very similar to Generate paths on active floor. The only difference is that this one creates paths on every single floor in the selected building.

• Generate paths between floors in building - This option allows you to connect stair and elevators in the whole building just by one click! It’s very important so every elevator and stair polygon has a path node (marked in red circles). Because of that they can be connected within all floorplans. Polygons without nodes will be skipped by the system.

• Revert unsaved autogenerated paths in campus - This option removes all unsaved autogenerated paths in the tool.

Eraser

When selecting the “Eraser” in the “Quick Paths Tool” you are able to delete one or more paths at the same time. By clicking on “Eraser” a red octagon will appear on the map, which you can use to delete paths. For more information, please have a look in the “How to delete one or more paths?”-section.

Map Display Options

In the “Map Display Options”-box you will have the opportunity to determine how the map look like in the path editor, so basically when you are working on paths. By default the two options “Show Building Layer” and “Show warnings” are selected. This is how it should look like on the map with these to options:

Basically, the blue area shows the outline of the buildings within a campus. In addition, the path network inside a building is hidden under the outline and the outdoor path network will show by default.

By unticking the “Show Building Layer”-box, the outline will disappear and you would see the floors of the buildings instead.

Please watch the video for more information about this “Map Display Option”:

With the “Show warnings”-box ticked the system will show a warning when there are conflicts like e.g. an overlap of paths. Here you can see an example of how it looks when a warning is appearing on the map:

Please have a look into this video for further information:

Then there is the option of ticking the “Show POIs”-box where the POI information will become visible. This will help for the orientation within a floor, when working on paths.

The following video will show how this option looks like in the path editor.

Snap Distance Options

When drawing paths the “Snap distance”-value will determine how easily the points (nodes) are snapping to existing paths and nodes. This supports the drawing of paths, so it becomes easier to handle.

Here is an example to visualise this:

In the following picture, we want to draw a path from room number 14 into the corridor and therefore connect the room with the rest of the path network. We select “Draw path” and click on the middle of the room to place the source node and start drawing the path.

After the source node is placed we continue with the target node by dragging it towards the corridor. At some point it will jump directly on either the path or the closest node. That is basically the snapping, so you would not need to draw the path all by yourself and get some support.

The default setting is 0.5 m, which means when drawing a path, the node will snap when it comes as close as 0,5m to another path or node. Depending on buildings and complexity of path networks, it can be relevant to lower it all the way down to the minimum of 5 cm, which will almost avoid the snapping. Also it can be up to a maximum of 1 cm.

See this video for a description of the “Snap Distance Options”:

Do you have more questions? Feel free to reach out to us by sending a request to support@mazemap.com.