Canvas Builder

Canvas Builder is FireDeck's in-app floor-plan drawing tool. You draw walls and rooms, place devices with plan symbols, run wire between them, and print a full plan set — all on the same projects you generate submittals for.

Open a project in the canvas

1. Click Canvas Builder in the Submittals group in the sidebar. The page lists every project in your shop with its status.
2. Click a project card (Open floor plan →). The first time you open one, FireDeck creates its drawing layer; after that you land straight back in the editor.
3. To start from scratch, click New Project — it creates a normal project, the same one described in Projects.

You can also open the canvas from the project itself: on the project page, click Open in Canvas.

Set up a floor

The floor bar sits above the toolbar. Type a Floor name, set W ft and H ft, and click + Floor. Click a floor's tab to switch to it; the × next to the active tab deletes it and everything on it.

If you have a plan to work from, click 🖼 Underlay and pick an image or PDF. Once it's in place the button opens a menu: ⬆ Replace image / PDF…, ↔ Move / resize, ✨ AI trace rooms + walls, ▭ Re-trace an area… (drag a box to redo just that region — your manual work is untouched), and ✕ Remove underlay.

Then draw with the Wall and Room tools. Each has two modes, on the caret beside the button:

• Line / Polygon — click corner by corner. Right for an irregular space. Esc ends the run.
• Box — press, drag out a rectangle, release. Right for the other 90% of rooms: one drag instead of four aimed clicks. The running size shows at the pointer as you drag, so you can pull an exact 20 × 14 instead of drawing one and then correcting it. A wall box releases as four connected walls, and Ctrl+Z takes all four back in one step.

Moving and resizing a room. With the Select tool, drag a room's body to move the whole space — its name goes with it, and the devices inside deliberately stay put, because a room is the architectural boundary and moving it should not silently relocate detectors placed to code. Select a single room and it grows corner grips: drag one to resize. A square room stays square (the opposite corner anchors); an irregular space moves that one corner, which is how you reshape it without redrawing. The area updates with the shape, so occupancy, spacing and the compliance check all follow.

Place devices

1. Click the Device tool. A palette appears with one row of groups — Fire Alarm — Initiating, Notification, Panels, Modules, BDA / ERRCS, and Architectural.
2. Pick a group, then a device type. Each button shows the symbol as it will draw.
3. Click on the plan to place it. Doors and windows snap onto the nearest wall, and Snap keeps everything on a 1 ft grid.
4. Switch to Select to drag a device somewhere else. ↩ and ↪ (Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y) undo and redo.

Selecting a device opens the properties panel. Set Model # — the → all button applies it to every device of that type on the floor — plus Loop, Address, Circuit, and Zone.

Use the Wire tool to chain wire from one device to the next. Once the wiring is drawn, ⚡ Address fills in loops, addresses, NAC circuits, and zones from it; anything you type by hand overrides it. ⚡ Auto-place FA drops NFPA 72 detectors and appliances into every drawn room, Coverage overlays detector and strobe circles, and Compliance audits the floor against NFPA 72 / IFC 510.

Placed devices become project parts

What you draw mirrors into the project's parts list automatically, so the battery calc and device matrix reflect the plan. Rows that came from the drawing are marked, and their quantity follows the canvas — you change it by adding or removing devices on the plan. Hand-added parts are left alone. On the Devices tab, Sync from Plan re-runs it on demand; see Devices & Circuits.

Sheet view and the plan set

Toggle Sheet to see the whole printed set: the cover, one plan sheet per floor, and the riser and sequence-of-operations page. Every box drags and resizes where it prints. In Sheet view you can also add ＋ Text and ＋ Image to the Cover or Notes page, and ＋ Add Page appends sheets carrying Battery Calculation (NFPA), Manufacturer Battery Calc, Voltage Drop, Device Matrix, Device Schedule (from plan), or Sequence of Operations blocks.

Open Legend/Notes to edit the device legend, general notes, cover text, title-block names, and which boxes appear. Under Sheet Templates, name your setup and click Save current to reuse it — then Apply it on the next job so every plan set leaves the shop looking the same.

Everything leaves through the ⬇ Download button: Plan set (PDF) — the whole set; AutoCAD (DXF) — editable CAD, see below; Floor plan (PNG) — this floor as an image for a submittal block; Device schedule (CSV). The AHJ package itself is still built on the submittal side — see Generating a Submittal.

Exporting to AutoCAD

⬇ AutoCAD downloads a ZIP with one drawing per floor, ready to keep working in. The files are AutoCAD R2013 DXF, which opens natively in AutoCAD and in every free viewer. Everything arrives as real, selectable CAD geometry at true size — a 10.5 ft wall measures 10.5 ft — sorted onto named layers you can freeze, recolour, or plot independently:

Two things the export does not include. There is no native DWG: writing DWG correctly requires a licensed conversion engine, and since DXF opens in AutoCAD directly there is nothing to gain by faking it — if your recipient insists on DWG, open the DXF and Save As DWG. And the scanned underlay does not come across; the DXF carries the geometry you drew, not the PDF or image you traced it over.