A complete guide to projects, signs, and messages

Open the editor. The Projects window lists everything you've already created — click a row to open it. To begin a new job, click + New Project, type a name, and confirm.

Two other ways in from this window: 📚 Examples loads a ready-made sample project so you can explore a finished job, and the drop zone at the bottom imports a project .zip that was previously exported from Planqix (drag it on, or click to browse).

Planqix opens your new project and immediately asks for a floor plan. Fill in the details that identify this sheet:

• LabelThe name you'll see on the tab and in the sidebar — e.g. Ground Floor. This is the only required field.
• LevelOptional short level code, e.g. L1. Appears in the schedule and exports.
• AreaOptional zone or wing name, e.g. Wing A — useful when one level is split across several sheets.

Click the drop zone (or drag files onto it) to choose your drawing. Planqix accepts PNG, JPG, TIFF, and PDF, and you can select several files at once — each one becomes its own floor plan.

If you picked a PDF, a page selector opens showing a thumbnail of every page. Tick the sheets you actually want (Select All and Select None help with big sets, and Load More Pages pulls in further thumbnails on long documents), then click Add Selected Pages. Each selected page becomes a separate floor plan.

Click Upload Floorplan. Your drawing loads into the editor exactly as-is, and you're ready to start placing signs on top of it.

The editor is laid out like this:

• Toolbar (top)Every tool and project action. Full reference in Tools & settings.
• Left sidebarA tab for each floor plan, plus + Add Floorplan at the top to add another sheet.
• Canvas (centre)Your drawing, with signs placed on top. Scroll to zoom, and drag with the Pan tool to move around.
• Properties panel (right)Everything about whatever you currently have selected. Empty until you select something.
• Status bar (bottom)Current status message, scale, zoom level, and cursor position.

The toolbar along the top of the editor holds every tool you'll use to build out a plan:

• 

  SelectClick a sign to select it and edit it in the Properties panel. Also used to drag signs around. Shortcut V.

• 

  Select multipleDrag a box around several signs to select them all at once — see Select, align & delete.

• 

  PanDrag to move around the canvas. Shortcut H. You can also pan at any time by dragging with the middle mouse button.

• 

  Add sign (+)Drop new signs onto the plan — see Add signs.

• 

  DeleteRemoves whatever is currently selected. Shortcut Del.
• Align H / Align VThese two buttons only appear once you have two or more signs selected — they snap the selection into a straight horizontal or vertical line.

• 

  W/O (white-out)Paints over part of the background drawing — see White-out.

• 

  Set ScaleCalibrates real-world units against the drawing. Shortcut K — see Scale & measure.

• 

  MeasureReports the real-world distance between two points once a scale is set. Shortcut L.

• 

  FitFrames the whole plan in the window. Shortcut F.

• 

  Zoom inZooms in around the current view. Shortcut Ctrl +.

• 

  Zoom outZooms out. Shortcut Ctrl −. The mouse wheel zooms too.

• 

  ScheduleOpens the Message Schedule, and from there Quick Counts — see Quick Counts & schedule.

• 

  FeedbackSends a question, comment, or bug report straight to the Planqix team.

• 

  SaveSaves the project. Shortcut Ctrl S — see Saving & undo.

• 

  ExportOpens the export menu — see Export.

• 

  Project SettingsProject-level actions: Details, Revisions, Redline Inbox, Copy view link, and Sharing — see parts 15 and 16.

• 

  Project MenuReopens the Projects window to create, open, or switch projects.

Click your username in the top-right corner for the account menu: Keyboard Shortcuts, Settings, Getting Started Guide (this page), and Sign out.

Choose Settings for app-wide preferences. These follow you between projects, and every one of them takes effect immediately:

• AppearanceSwitches between dark and light mode.
• Sign hover previewsWhen on, hovering a sign tag on the plan pops up that sign's artwork and message so you can check it without selecting it.
• Hover preview sizeHow large that hover popup is, from 0.5× to 3×.
• Braille export fontThe typeface used for message text in the Braille SVG export. The list is grouped into "Highly Recommended" and "Other Acceptable" — the recommended fonts are the ones that read cleanly at sign sizes and satisfy typical accessibility requirements.
• Sign leader line colorColour of the line that connects a sign's tag back to its location dot on the plan.
• Sign leader line thicknessThickness of that same leader line, 0.5 to 8.
• Location marker sizeRadius of the location dot placed on the plan, 6 to 60.
• Location tag sizeSize of the type/number tag label, set independently of the dot — turn this up if tags are hard to read on a large sheet.
• Snap signs to wallsWhile placing a sign, snaps its location dot to a nearby wall if one is within 15 pixels. Only appears if wall data exists for the sheet.
• Suffix sign type when exterior / glass-mountedWhen on, ticking Exterior or Glass mounted on a sign automatically appends a suffix to its type — so A4 becomes A4.X, and a sign that's both becomes A4.X.V. The suffixed types are counted separately in the schedule, which is what you want when they're fabricated differently.
• Exterior suffix / Glass-mounted suffixThe two text boxes below it let you change those suffixes from the defaults .X and .V to whatever your office uses.
• Default Sign TypesClick Manage… to open your permanent sign types — covered next.

Open Settings from the username menu and click Manage… next to Default Sign Types.

The Default Sign Types window opens — empty the first time. Type a name into the box at the bottom (for example restroom) and click + Add, or just press Enter.

Planqix adds the type with an automatically assigned colour. Add as many as you need — one row per type. Click Done when finished, then Close to leave Settings.

Each row carries the full setup for that type. You can fill these in now, or leave them until the job is confirmed:

• Colour dotClick it to pick the colour used for this type's tags on the plan. Keeping colours consistent makes a marked-up sheet readable at a glance.
• Code Req.Whether new signs of this type are flagged as code-required by default. The schedule can filter on this — see Quick Counts & schedule.
• + ImgUploads the SVG artwork template for this type. Reads ↑ Img once one exists, and clicking again replaces it.
• ⊞ FieldAppears once artwork exists. Marks the rectangle on the artwork where message text and braille go — see Images, pictograms & braille.
• ▣ PictoAlso appears once artwork exists. Marks where a pictogram sits on the artwork.
• ✕Removes the type from your permanent list. Signs already placed keep their type.
• DescriptionThe text box under each row. A shared, human-readable description ("Room ID, tactile + braille") that appears alongside the type in the placement bar and the schedule.

Two places, same settings. Everything here can also be reached from the Properties panel while a sign of that type is selected. Use whichever is closer to hand — they edit the same thing.

Click the + tool in the toolbar. A bar appears along the bottom of the screen listing your sign types — click the one you want to place, e.g. restroom. It stays selected, so you can place a run of the same type without reselecting. Clicking the highlighted type again deselects it.

Placing a sign takes two clicks:

• First clickSets the location — the dot on the plan marking where the sign physically goes.
• Second clickDrops the tag — the coloured label. Between the two clicks the tag follows your cursor, so you can pull it into clear space and it stays connected to the dot by a leader line.

Press Esc between the two clicks to cancel and remove the sign.

Instead of clicking for the location, you can drag a rectangle on that first click. The location dot is placed at the centre and Planqix also records the sign's footprint — useful for larger signage like a directory or monument where the physical extent matters.

Signs are numbered automatically in the order you place them, starting at 1. The number shows on the tag and becomes the Sign # column in the schedule.

To reposition anything later, switch to the Select tool and drag: dragging the tag moves just the label, and dragging the location dot moves the sign's actual position. The leader line follows either way.

No permanent sign types yet? The bar just reads "No default types — add them in ⚙ Settings," but the + tool still works. Click the plan to drop a sign anyway; it's placed with no type.

Select it, then type a name straight into the Sign Type field in the Properties panel. A dropdown suggests common categories — Unit Number, Room ID, Restroom, Stairwell ID, wayfinding, custom — but you can type anything, including your own codes like A4. A checkbox appears just below: Add "<type>" to permanent sign types. Tick it to save that type for reuse in this and every other project, exactly as if you'd added it in Settings.

The colour dot under the Sign Type field recolours the type on the fly: click the dot, pick a colour, then click Apply. If the type is one of your permanent types, the new colour is saved there too and follows it into every project.

Click Save in the toolbar — or press Ctrl S — to store the project on the server. The button briefly changes to Saved to confirm.

Ctrl Z undoes your last change and Ctrl Shift Z (or Ctrl Y) redoes it. This covers placing, moving, retyping, and deleting signs.

If you try to close the tab with unsaved changes, your browser warns you first. Separately, Planqix quietly snapshots your work to this browser about once a minute. If a tab ever closes before you saved, the next time you open that floor plan you'll be offered Restore unsaved changes — take it to recover the edits, or Discard to keep the last version that reached the server.

The local snapshot is tied to this browser on this computer. It's a crash safety net, not a substitute for saving — always click Save before you finish for the day.

Click + Add Floorplan above the canvas to add another level. Fill in its Label, Level, and Area the same way as the first, and upload its drawing.

Every sheet appears both as a tab in the bar above the canvas and as a row in the Floorplans list on the left. Click either to switch. Sign numbering, scale, and white-outs are all per-sheet.

On each sidebar row, the gear icon renames the sheet or edits its level and area, and the up/down arrows reorder the list — worth doing so your sheets read in building order, since that order carries through to the schedule and exports.

Click Set Scale (or press K), then click two points spanning a distance you already know — a dimensioned wall, a standard door opening. A prompt asks for that real length; type it in (e.g. 10 ft) and confirm. The status bar then shows the scale instead of "not set."

With a scale set, click Measure (or press L) and click any two points — the distance between them is reported in real units. Press Esc to clear the measurement.

Scale is stored per floor plan, so set it on each sheet you need to make measurments on.

Click W/O in the toolbar, then drag a rectangle over anything you want to mask. Repeat for as many areas as you need, then switch back to the Select tool when you're done.

White-out only hides the background drawing — it never hides your signs, and it doesn't alter the file you uploaded.

Click the dashed-box icon — Select multiple — then drag a box around several signs to select them all at once.

With more than one sign selected, Align H and Align V appear in the toolbar — click one to snap the selected tags into a straight line. Dragging any tag in a multi-selection moves the whole group together.

To remove signs, select them and click the trash icon (or press Del). If you delete something by mistake, Ctrl Z brings it back.

Click Schedule in the toolbar for a spreadsheet-style list of every sign in the project: Sign #, Type, Floor, Area, Message, Notes, and 2-Sided. On a first pass the message column is simply blank. Click any column header to sort by it.

Click Quick Counts at the bottom of the Schedule for the summary you'll actually estimate from: how many signs of each type exist, broken down by floor, with totals.

The filter button at the bottom cycles through three views — ▦ All Signs, ✓ Code Only, and ✗ No Code — using each sign's Code Required setting. This is how you separate code-mandated signage from optional wayfinding when pricing. The filter applies to the Schedule and Quick Counts together.

Both views export straight to ⬇ CSV or ⬇ XLSX for your estimate or proposal — and whatever filter is active is what gets exported.

If the job doesn't move forward, you can stop here. If it does, carry on below.

With a sign selected, find the Message box in the Properties panel and type the text the sign should show. It saves as you go.

Two keys make filling in a whole schedule fast:

• EnterSaves the message and jumps straight to the next sign's message box, selecting that sign on the plan as it goes. It wraps from the last sign back to the first, so you can work through an entire floor without touching the mouse.
• Alt + EnterInserts a line break inside the message instead of advancing — use it for multi-line copy. Shift Enter does the same thing.

Tick Double sided when a sign is read from both faces — a ceiling-hung or projecting blade sign, for instance, where someone approaching from either direction needs to read it. Two things then appear:

• Side markers (A / B)Sets whether the A and B labels sit left/right or top/bottom of the location dot on the plan. Pick whichever matches how the sign actually faces, so the installer can tell which face is which.
• Message (B)The text for the second face. The original Message box is relabelled Message (A). Pressing Enter in the A box moves you to the B box before moving on to the next sign.

The preview then shows both faces side by side, and the schedule's 2-Sided column flags the sign so it's priced and fabricated correctly.

Below the message boxes are three tick boxes and a notes field that drive the schedule and pricing:

• Code RequiredMarks the sign as code-mandated rather than optional. Drives the ✓ Code Only / ✗ No Code filter. It is set per location, so you can tick or untick any single sign — see the step below for how the default is decided and how to apply one answer to a whole type at once.
• ExteriorMarks the sign as outdoors — usually a different substrate. With the suffix setting on, this also appends .X to its type so it counts separately.
• Glass mountedMarks the sign as mounted on glass, which normally means a second backing panel. Appends .V the same way.
• NotesFree text for anything you want to track internally — mounting height, a query for the architect. It appears in the schedule but never on the printed sign.

Code Required, in detail. The tick box belongs to the individual sign location, not to the type — two Room ID signs on the same floor can disagree, which is what you want when one door is a code-mandated exit and the next is a store cupboard.

What a new location starts as is decided in this order:

• 1. The type's project settingWhatever you last applied with the Apply to all button described below, for this project.
• 2. The permanent sign typeOtherwise, the Code Required tick against that type in ⚙ Settings → Default Sign Types. Set a permanent type to code there and every location you place with it arrives already ticked.
• 3. TickedIf the type is neither, Planqix assumes code required — the safer default to price against.

Whichever way it starts, you can always tick or untick a single location afterwards and it stays that way. Editing that sign's message or notes will no longer quietly reset it.

Applying one answer to a whole sign type. Next to the tick box is an Apply to all <type> button. Set the current sign how you want it, then click the button: every sign of that type in the project is set to match — ticked or unticked, whichever the current sign is — and that becomes the type's default, so locations you place later with the same type arrive marked the same way.

Use it when a whole type turns out to be optional signage you don't want in the code count, or when the reverse is true and the type needs to be code across the board. It is a single undo step if you change your mind.

Scope. Apply to all affects this project only — it will not change the same sign type in your other jobs. To change the starting point for every future project, edit the type in ⚙ Settings → Default Sign Types instead.

Higher up the panel, Sign Description is shared by every sign of the type — a one-line explanation like "Room identification, tactile + braille" that shows up next to the type in the placement bar and helps whoever reads the schedule later.

With a sign selected, click ↑ Upload image for this type in the Properties panel and choose your artwork (SVG, JPG, or PNG — SVG gives the cleanest result and the most accurate sizing). Every sign of that type updates at once.

Planqix reads the artwork's real-world size and asks you to confirm it. Check the numbers — the dialog tells you how confident it is and where the size came from, and an SVG exported from Illustrator often needs correcting. The padlock keeps the aspect ratio locked while you type. Click Save size.

This size matters: it drives the schedule, the printed dimensions, the braille dot spacing, and the preview scale. You can change it any time from the small width × height boxes next to Sign Preview.

Straight after upload the preview shows the bare artwork — no message text yet, because Planqix doesn't know where on the artwork the message belongs. Click Set Message Field.

In the picker that opens, drag a rectangle over the area where message text should sit. Fine-tune with the X% / Y% / W% / H% boxes and Apply if you need it exact, set the Preview text color to match your artwork, then click Save.

If the message area is simply the whole sign, skip the dragging entirely — click Use Full Panel in the footer and then Save.

As soon as that field exists, every sign of the type renders its own message inside it — and Planqix automatically translates each message into Unified English Braille and draws the dot pattern beneath the text. There is no separate braille step and nothing to type twice: change a message and its braille updates with it.

Two controls just above the preview tune how that renders, per sign type:

• Include BrailleUntick for signs that don't need it — a directory, a projecting blade sign, anything above reach range.
• Copy heightThe height of the message text in inches (default 0.625″). Tactile signage usually has a required range, so set this to whatever your specification calls for and the braille scales with it.

To add a pictogram, reopen the picker with Set Message Field and switch to the ▣ Pictogram Area tab. Drag a rectangle where the pictogram belongs — typically the upper panel of a restroom or accessibility sign — and click Save.

A Pictogram dropdown now appears in the Properties panel — it only shows up once a pictogram area is defined for that sign type. Pick from the built-in set (restroom, accessible, men, women, toilet, shower, phone, TTY, stairs, recycle, trash, smoking, no smoking) or choose None. It drops into the area you marked.

The preview now shows the finished sign: artwork, pictogram, message, and braille composed together. Click it to open it full size and check it properly. Then click Save in the toolbar.

Shortcut. The Use Full Panel button in the picker's footer sets the message field to the whole sign in one click, so you don't have to drag a rectangle around the edges. Use it for types where the entire artwork is the message area — a plain plate with no fixed logo, border or pictogram to work around. The green rectangle jumps to 0–100% in both directions; press Save to apply it like any other field. (The button appears on the ▤ Message Field tab only — a pictogram area is always square, so it can never be the full panel.)

Click Export in the toolbar and pick a format:

• Export ZIPThe complete project — every floor plan, all sign data, and artwork. This is the archive format, and it's what the Projects window's drop zone imports.
• Export Schedule CSVThe sign schedule as plain CSV, for a spreadsheet or an estimating system.
• Export Schedule XLSXThe same schedule as a formatted Excel workbook.
• Export Braille SVGProduction artwork for the whole project — each sign as vector art with its message and braille laid out, ready for a router or engraver. Uses the Braille export font from Settings.

The two schedule exports respect whatever filter is active in the Schedule window — so you can hand over a code-only list without editing anything.

Open the menu and choose Details to record the job's identifying information: Project Name, Project Address, Job #, Date Created, and general Notes. The Revision # and Last Saved fields fill in automatically. Click Save Details when done.

Choose Revisions to publish a permanent snapshot of the project as it stands. Do this right before sending a set out, so you always have a dated record of exactly what was issued and can point back to it if the scope is questioned later. Click Publish Current Version and confirm.

Publishing a revision is also what people you share with will see — sharing shows the latest published snapshot, not your in-progress edits.

From Project Settings, choose Sharing, then pick who can view it:

• Only meNobody else can open it. This is the default.
• My organisationEveryone in your organisation can view it.
• Invited email addressesOnly the specific people you invite. An Invite by email box appears — enter an address and click Send invite.
• Anyone with the linkAny signed-in user who has the link. A Share link section appears: Generate link, Copy, and Revoke link to cut off access for everyone using it.

The Read-only for viewers toggle decides the rest: leave it on and viewers can only look; turn it off and they can propose changes back to you. Click Save Settings.

Copy view link in the same menu grabs the project's view URL in one click, ready to paste into an email.

When viewers can propose changes, they get review tools in the Viewer — selecting signs, proposing new ones, flagging deletions, and pinning notes on the sheet. None of it touches your project. Their submissions — redlines — collect in Redline Inbox.

Open the inbox to work through them. Pick a submission on the left, then use Preview Overlay to see the proposed changes drawn over your plan before committing to anything. From there you can Accept Selected Change one at a time, or Accept All Changes to take the whole submission. Nothing is applied to your live project until you accept it.

Tools

• VSelect tool
• HPan tool
• KSet scale
• LMeasure distance
• FFit plan to view
• DelDelete selected

View & edit

• Ctrl SSave project
• Ctrl ZUndo
• Ctrl Shift ZRedo
• Ctrl YRedo (alternate)
• Ctrl +Zoom in
• Ctrl −Zoom out

In the message box

• EnterSave and jump to the next sign
• Alt EnterNew line within the message

General

• EscCancel current action / deselect
• ?Show the shortcut list

A few more shortcuts appear in the in-app list — N, M, and the review keys — which belong to the review workflows rather than the hand-drawn one covered here.