What does self storage floor plan software actually do?
A floor plan in self storage software is more than a picture of your facility. Every shape on the map is tied to a unit in your unit list, with its status, size and price. You see at a glance what is vacant, and you start a reservation from the same unit map.
How do you get there? We follow one facility from drawing to bookable unit: Capelle Rivium, the fictional demo facility we use throughout this website. One floor of 72 by 40 metres, 255 units from 2.5 to 30 m² in rows A to J, plus an office, a lift and a plant room. The facility, units and figures are made up; the steps are the ones in TheStorageControl.
File types and recognition are covered in the article on importing a floor plan, editing shapes in the one on drawing units. This one covers the whole journey, in six stages.
| Stage | What you do | What the system does | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Starting point | Have the architect's PDF ready and check the unit list | Will use the unit list as the reference for codes and sizes | A drawing and 255 units in the unit list |
| 2. Import | Choose the PDF, page 1, floor: ground floor | Reads the line work and text layer of the vector PDF | A draft for the ground floor |
| 3. Recognition | Look at the review screen | Derives the code pattern and scale, finds a shape per code and compares areas | 253 green, 2 orange, 3 red |
| 4. Review | Check 2 orange shapes and ignore 3 rooms, using Enter, I and N | Jumps to the next shape that needs attention after each decision | All 255 units have a shape |
| 5. Publish | Click publish | Checks for errors, archives any earlier version and writes the audit log | One live version for the facility |
| 6. Live map | Click unit D0111 and reserve it | Shows status, size and price and opens the normal reservation flow | A unit you rent out from the map |
Stage 1: a drawing and a unit list
Capelle Rivium starts where many facilities start: with a PDF from the architect. The file is called capelle-rivium-ground-floor.pdf, and page 1 shows the ground floor as a line drawing, with walls, corridors and a unit code such as D0111 in every bay. There is no status, price or tenant on it. So making a floor plan for your storage facility starts not with drawing, but with the drawing you already have.
The second ingredient is the unit list: the 255 units already in the system, with code, size and price. That list leads. A code on the drawing is only matched if it exists in the unit list, and the scale of the drawing is derived from the sizes in that same list. There is no known distance to measure by hand.
It works the other way round too. Drawing a shape does not create a new unit, so anything missing from the unit list will not appear on the map as a unit.
Tip: start with the unit list
Compare the codes on the drawing with your unit list before you import. If a unit has a different code on the drawing than in the list, or is missing from the list, the system cannot match it. A quick comparison up front saves red and orange shapes later.
Stage 2: importing page 1 as the ground floor
You import one file at a time, with one drawing per floor. If the PDF has several pages, you say which page belongs to this floor. For Capelle Rivium that is page 1, floor: ground floor.
Because it is a vector PDF, the server reads the line work and the text layer straight from the file. A scanned PDF without real lines and text is not read; export a vector PDF instead, or upload the scan as a PNG, JPG or WebP image. SVG works too. Each drawing can be up to 40 MB.
The import can carry on in the background, and the help panel has a video that walks you through it.
Stage 3: what the system recognised on its own
After import, the floor plan opens in the review screen with a colour per shape. First, the code pattern was derived from the facility's own unit codes: here, a letter for the row and four digits, such as D0111.
For every code in the unit list, the system looks for the smallest closed room around the label. That becomes the unit's shape. It then compares the area with the size in the unit list: within 20 percent is fine, with at least 0.6 m² of leeway for small units.
A shape only turns green at high confidence. A different area, a rectangle between the nearest walls because there was no closed room, or a unit cut off at the edge of the drawing goes to orange. Codes that were read but not matched get a placeholder shape, so nothing silently disappears.
Meanwhile a technical drawing with dimensions and a 3D model with doors and walkways have been generated. The result for Capelle Rivium:
- 253 shapes green: matched, with an area that agrees.
- 2 shapes orange: matched, but the system wants someone to take a look. In this example they are A0118 and B0119.
- 3 shapes red: the office, the lift and the plant room. They have a number on the drawing, but no unit belongs to them.
Stage 4: checking two shapes and ignoring three rooms
Now it is your turn, but only where needed: you do not go through the 253 green shapes one by one. The review screen works from the keyboard: Enter confirms, I ignores, and N jumps to the next shape that needs a look and zooms in on it.
For an orange shape, the side panel puts the drawn area next to the area in the unit list. If the outline is right, confirm it. If a wall is in the wrong place, drag a corner or a whole side to where it belongs; it snaps to nearby corners and walls. The drawn size is not written back to the unit. If the unit list is wrong instead, the fix belongs in the unit record.
Red is not an error here. The office, the lift and the plant room are not rentable units, so you ignore them and they turn grey and dashed. If a red shape was a misread, you pick the right unit from the list, which only offers units without a shape. For Capelle Rivium, the round goes like this:
- Press N. The screen zooms in on the first orange shape.
- In the side panel, compare the drawn area with the unit list and check that the outline follows the walls.
- Drag a corner or side if needed and press Enter. You jump on to the next shape that needs attention, where you do the same.
- Click the office and press I. Then ignore the lift and the plant room as well.
- Made a mistake? Undo it with Ctrl+Z, which goes back up to twenty changes.
Stage 5: publishing, without a developer
Once every shape has been checked, you publish. No code release or developer is involved; anyone allowed to configure units can do it: an owner, admin or manager.
The system checks the floor plan first. Publishing is blocked if a shape has no unit, two shapes share a unit, a unit is no longer in the unit list, or an outline is invalid: fewer than 3 or more than 64 corners, a line that crosses itself, or a shape outside the drawing.
There is also a list of units without a shape. For Capelle Rivium it is empty, because all 255 units have one. If units are still listed, you can only publish after explicitly acknowledging that. A missing unit is then a deliberate decision, not an oversight.
A floor plan version is a draft, published or archived, and each facility has one live version. If Capelle Rivium already had a published floor plan, that one is archived now and stays in the version history. Every import, change, publication, archive and deletion is recorded in the audit log, with a checksum of the geometry.
Stage 6: renting units from the live floor plan
Once published, the floor plan becomes the map on the Units page, next to the availability, grid and table views. In operational mode every unit takes the colour of its status. For Capelle Rivium: 233 occupied, 13 vacant, 5 reserved, 3 overlocked and 1 unavailable. Together, exactly the 255 units in the unit list.
Filters for search, status, size and price keep the map readable. A customer at the desk asks for about 7.5 m²? Filter on vacant and size, and you see straight away where the suitable units are.
Click D0111 and the unit drawer opens with code, status, floor, size and rent per month: 7.5 m², €99 per month, vacant. For a vacant unit, the drawer offers walk-in move-in, reserve or overlock. Reserve and move-in open the normal flows, so a reservation from the map is like any other.
Other statuses come with other actions: for an occupied unit you see the tenant and contract and can, for example, send a reminder, and for a reserved unit you complete the move-in.
After that: the 3D view and adding a new unit
The same work also produces a 3D view, built from the same unit shapes as the 2D map, with roofs tinted by status. You drag to orbit, zoom from close up out to the whole site and switch to top view. Click D0111 in 3D and the same unit drawer opens as on the map.
Heights come from the unit record when they are stored there; otherwise 2.7 metres is used, and one door per unit is generated on the corridor side. So it is a recognisable picture, not a construction drawing. The 3D preview is part of floor plan import and management; the 3D mode on the live unit map can be enabled per environment. More in the article on the 3D view.
And when a unit is added later? The order is always unit first, then shape. You add the new unit to the unit list in unit management, then draw or link its shape. Editing the published floor plan gives you a draft copy, while the live map stays in place. The list of units without a shape shows the new unit until it has one. When you publish the new version, the previous one is archived.
