What's new

October 2026 28 October 2026

ADA checks

• Every sign is checked against the ADA 703 sign rules, measured from the font it prints in, its copy height and the colours of its artwork: character height, sans-serif and upright letters, letter proportions, stroke thickness, character and line spacing, braille under raised copy and 3/8″ clear of other raised copy and the sign border, contrast, and the 6″ pictogram field.
• A location that fails is flagged on the plan; its properties panel lists each rule, where it failed and by how much.
• Plain text boxes get the size and contrast checks. Each text box's ADA check setting in Advanced Settings chooses tactile, visual, size and contrast, or off, and the panel there shows every rule with what was measured.

Location numbering

• A new Location numbering setting: number per floor (every floor counts 1, 2, 3 across all sign types, as before), or per sign type, where each type keeps its own count that carries on from floor to floor. A1 might run 1 to 12 on Level 1 and 13 to 20 on Level 2, while B2 starts again at 1.
• Switching a project that already has locations warns first, then renumbers every location on every floor to fit.
• Your choice becomes the default for your new projects. On a Business account only the admin can change it, and it becomes the default for everyone in the business.

Working on the plan

• Hold Shift and turn the mouse wheel to scroll the plan sideways, whichever tool is selected.
• Counts opens larger and easier to read, and works like a spreadsheet: click or drag across cells, Shift-click to extend, Ctrl/Cmd-click to add single cells, or click a floor or sign type to take its column or row. The total, count and average of what you select show at the bottom, and Ctrl/Cmd+C copies it.
• Scroll bars are darker and wider, so they are easier to see and grab.

More file types

• Floor plans can now be EPS, WebP, BMP, GIF, HEIC (iPhone photos) or compressed SVG (.svgz), alongside PDF, PNG, JPG, TIFF, SVG, DXF, DWG and Illustrator.
• Sign artwork can now be EPS, TIFF, WebP, GIF, BMP, HEIC or .svgz, alongside SVG, PDF, Illustrator, PNG and JPG.
• Illustrator files can keep their layers. When an Illustrator file records its top-level layers, each comes in as its own layer, so layers named Line 1, ada.line1 or pictogram1 become the sign's copy, tactile and pictogram areas just as they do from an SVG.
• Import SVG / AI… in Advanced Settings brings in Illustrator, PDF and EPS files as editable layers, not just SVG.
• An edited Messages file can be imported back as .xls, .ods or .tsv, as well as .xlsx and .csv.

Planqix on your phone

• A new mobile app, included with every Planqix plan at no extra charge. Open Planqix on a phone and it starts automatically; “Full site” switches to the full editor.
• On site you can add, move and delete sign locations, change a location's message, and see a preview of the sign.
• Take a photo of a location, or pin a note or photo to any spot on the plan. Notes and photos are saved on the phone and upload when you have signal.
• Changes made on a phone are kept even if the plan is open and being edited in the office at the same time.
• Site photos and notes appear in the editor on every plan, not just with the Install App add-on.

Floor plans

• Upload floor plans as SVG, DXF, DWG or Adobe Illustrator files, as well as PNG, JPG, TIFF and PDF.
• Duplicate a floor plan from the Floorplans list. The copy comes with every sign already placed on it, keeping the same location numbers. Handy when several floors share a layout.
• The workspace has scroll bars, so you can see where you are on a large plan and drag to move around it.
• Counts has its own button in the top bar, between Messages and Previews.

Working faster

• Click the Sign Type box in the Properties panel for a list of the project's sign types. Pick one, or type to filter or to add a new type. Click away to keep the type you had.
• Every tool has a keyboard shortcut. Hover over a tool button to see it, or press ? for the full list. New ones: S for multi-select, A to add a sign, W for white-out, Shift+H and Shift+V to align tags, and + and − to zoom.

Sign artwork

• Upload sign artwork as a PDF. A PDF with vector artwork works like an SVG; a scanned page comes in as a picture. Only the first page is used.
• Upload sign artwork as an Adobe Illustrator (.ai) file, saved with Create PDF Compatible File on (Illustrator's default). It comes in the same way a PDF does.
• A multi-page SVG keeps just its first page.
• Shop drawings keep their text: lettering stays in its own font, size and place when the drawing is uploaded.
• An uploaded drawing comes in as a few tidy layers rather than one layer per item, and anything outside the sign is gathered on one “Outside sign” layer.
• When you confirm a sign's size by picking one part of the drawing, that part becomes the sign's outline. Location previews crop to the outline and follow its shape.
• Set the size of uploaded artwork by measuring one of its parts. Pick an element and type its real size, and the whole drawing scales to match. This is useful for shop drawings with title blocks.
• Artwork with no message fields opens straight into Advanced Settings, where you can draw the fields.
• The “+ Img” button in the Sign Types list takes SVG, PDF, PNG and JPG.
• Panels drawn turned on their side in a shop drawing stay that way. They used to come into Advanced Settings rotated 90°.

Advanced Settings

• Add a drop shadow to any text or ADA area, in a colour of your choice. It shows at a glance which copy is raised and which is flat.
• Turn selected shapes or text into text, ADA, pictogram or icon fields. The copy height is matched from the artwork.
• A selection turned into a pictogram field becomes a 6″ × 6″ field centred on it, the ADA pictogram field size.
• Text that comes in with a drawing, such as notes and title block text, can be selected and edited: change what it says, its size and its font. It stays where the drawing put it.
• Message fields and pictogram areas are now set in Advanced Settings. The Set Message Field and Set Pictogram Area buttons are gone from the Properties panel.
• Rounded corners are kept, and fields no longer grow a little every time you save.
• The highlight around a selected item lines up with the item again.
• Ungroup splits imported groups into their parts.
• The message, pictogram and icon area buttons are now grouped under “Dynamic fields”.
• Lock a layer with the padlock in the Layers list, so nothing on it can be selected or moved while you work around it. Locked layers stay locked after saving.
• Stacked text: set a text or ADA area's Direction to stacked and each letter stands upright, one under the next — for vertical blade and pylon signs. Each row of the message becomes its own column.
• Draw sign outline: on an uploaded photo or scan, drag a box round the sign to mark its edge for location previews.
• The drop shadow on text is smaller and sits behind the letters. Set its offset and strength per text box under Drop shadow.
• Pressing Escape, Delete or Ctrl+Z in Advanced Settings no longer changes the floor plan behind it. A location you had just added is no longer lost when you open or close Advanced Settings.
• A pictogram area no longer shows up twice when a sign type is opened.
• A new ADA text area, added or converted from the drawing, starts at 5/8″ copy. Change it in the box's Copy ht.
• Saving keeps the sign at the size set in Advanced Settings. A picture whose proportions differed from the sign's used to shrink the sign to the picture on save.

Messages

• Edit sign numbers, types, messages, notes, pictograms and icons right in the Messages window. Each edit can be undone.
• Pictogram and Icon columns appear in the Messages window when the floor plan uses them.