The complete end-to-end process for producing a compliant BS 5839-1:2017 fire alarm design in FireDraw — from raw floor plan to branded client quotation.
1
Prepare & Load
2
Building Outline
3
Set Scale
4
Rooms
5
Category & Devices
6
Compliance
7
Cost & Quote
8
Save & Export
1
Prepare & Load the Floor Plan
FireDraw accepts PDF, PNG, JPG, GIF and WEBP floor plans. A clean plan gives the best room detection — strip out furniture, dimension lines and text labels before you start.
🧹 Prepare Plan(optional) — opens the Mural extractor to clean a cluttered plan: removes furniture, labels and dimensions, leaving walls only.
📂 Load Plan — upload the cleaned plan to the canvas.
Keep the original unmarked plan to hand — it can be uploaded later as the first page of the quote PDF.
💡 Tip: the Welcome guide is always available via the ? Help button in the header, and every sidebar panel has its own ? badge with contextual help.
2
Draw the Building Outline — WORKFLOW STEP 1 OF 4
The sidebar workflow is gated: Scale, Rooms and Devices stay locked until an outline exists. The outline tells FireDraw which area to analyse.
Click ⬡ Draw Building Outline and trace the perimeter — click to add corners, click the first point again to close the polygon.
Or use ⟳ Find Building to auto-detect the outline from the plan image.
3
Set the Drawing Scale — WORKFLOW STEP 2 OF 4
Every device-spacing calculation depends on this step. An inaccurate scale produces a non-compliant design, so verify it carefully.
Click ⇔ Measure Tool, then click two points on the plan with a known real-world distance (e.g. a room marked 5 m).
Type the real distance in metres and press Set Scale.
Alternatively, enter the drawing scale directly (common: 1:50 · 1:100 · 1:200 · 1:500).
Use the Zoom slider or ⤢ Fit Screen to frame the plan.
⚠ Gate: Room Count stays disabled until a scale is set — the sidebar will warn “Set drawing scale in Step 3 before running Room Count”.
4
Detect & Tag Rooms — WORKFLOW STEP 3 OF 4
Click ◈ Room Count — FireDraw auto-detects rooms from the plan.
Rooms flooding into each other? Use ✏ Draw Wall to paint walls over gaps (click A, click B; adjust brush thickness and wall sensitivity), then re-run.
Missed rooms: use the seed room tool or draw a room manually.
Tag each room as Sleeping, Unoccupied or High Risk — this drives which device types are auto-placed.
Confirm and lock the detected rooms when satisfied.
5
Choose Category & Place Devices — WORKFLOW STEP 4 OF 4
First select the BS 5839-1 system category from the header bar — it determines where automatic detection is required:
Category
Coverage
M
Manual only — call points & sounders, no automatic detectors
L5 → L1
Life safety: escape routes only (L5) escalating to full automatic detection throughout (L1)
P2 / P1
Property protection: defined high-risk areas (P2) or throughout (P1)
Place External Door icons first on every final exit — these define escape routes and position the call points.
Click ⚡ Auto Place to populate the whole design, then confirm or cancel the proposal.
Or place manually: pick a device (smoke, heat, MCP, sounder, strobe, FACP, I/O modules, beam detector…) and click the canvas. Use the Place / Move / Delete mode pill to edit.
Draw escape routes where required by the category.
6
Check Compliance
Run the Compliance Check — the Compliance Monitor lists any BS 5839-1 issues.
