The objective is to end up with an outline of each room such that the Browser GUI can
display the rooms of the home to the homeowner,
the homeowner can click on a room and get a unique room menu for that room, and
so that the rooms that are occupied or that have their lights on become highlighted.
At first, some people think that the outline of each room can be imported from a CAD file of the house. Unfortunately, the CAD file only has a description of the outline of the walls on a floor plan of the home - not a CAD description of the outline of each room. Therefore, to get the outline of the rooms, you have to trace over a gif or jpg of the floor plan which can be obtained from the CAD file or from the blueprints.
You can open the AutoCAD floor plan of a house and convert it to a gif or jpg
Obtain the “.dwg” file from the architect or general contractor
Download & install the AutoCAD viewer “Volo View” (price is changing) from http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=3239384
Run Volo View Express and open the .dwg file of the house
Download & install the free "PrintKey 2000" application from http://www.webtree.ca/newlife/printkey_info.htm to save a .gif of the display of the PC screen
Press the “Prnt Scrn” button on your keyboard (above the "F" keys on some keyboards)
“Ctrl R” to extract a Rectangle of the window that was captured
“Ctrl S” to save the image, enter the filename and “Save as type” “JPEG image file (.jpg)”
You may want to put the file in "C:\Program Files\Destiny Networks\Projects" so that when you go to add the floor plan to your project, it will be immediately available in the pop up "Add Floor Area" menu.
There are some free PLT to jpg conversion programs on the Web. Try http://www.sdicgm.com/
Another approach is to simply take a picture of the blueprints with your digital camera. The default file type for most digital camera's is .jpg. If you want, you can then open and edit the image within your favorite image editing program to crop the image as appropriate. Then save it as a .jpg in "C:\Program Files\Destiny Networks\Projects".