Edit maps in the Map Editor

Use the Map Editor to create and update your office's floor plan in Robin. Draw walls and rooms, fix imported geometry and keep your map matched to the real space. This article explains the ways to get a map into Robin and how to use the Map Editor.

Open the Map Editor

1. In the Robin dashboard, go to Manage and open your office's Map view.
2. Select the floor you want to work on.
3. Open the Edit floor dropdown and select Layout.

The Map Editor opens with that floor's map loaded.

Ways to create and update your map

There are 4 ways to get a floor plan into Robin. Pick the one that matches your starting point.

Upload a CAD file

If you have a CAD drawing of your floor (a .dxf file), upload it. Robin converts it into an editable map.

1. Select Add a map and upload your .dxf file. Select the upload area or drag the file into it.
2. Select layers. Robin shows the layers it finds in your CAD file. Keep layers with structural elements, such as walls, turned on. Leave layers with desks and furniture off. You add bookable resources such as desks later, in a separate step.
3. Edit the floor plan. The Map Editor opens. Draw any walls the import missed and remove details that should not appear.
4. Review and save your map.

Note: Keep desk and furniture layers off when you select layers. The map you build is the background for your floor. You place interactive resources such as desks on top of it afterward.

Draw a custom map from scratch

If you do not have a CAD file, start with a blank canvas and draw the floor yourself with the drawing tools. Interior walls, exterior walls and rectangular areas are usually enough to block out a floor. Everything in the sections below applies.

Edit an existing map

If your floor already has a map, the Map Editor opens it with all of its elements: walls, furniture, labels, decor and accessibility symbols. Keep it up to date as the space changes. An existing map adds a few extra concepts, such as the floor boundary. See Map elements and the floor boundary below.

Have Robin's map team build it

Robin's map team can build your map from a floor plan you provide.

1. Contact your Customer Success Manager or the Robin support team and share your floor plan file.
2. The map team converts it into a Robin map and adds it to your office.
3. After Robin delivers the map, you can adjust it yourself at any time in the Map Editor. See Edit an existing map above.

Editor basics and navigation

Learn your way around before you draw anything: the tools in the side panel, how to move around the canvas and zoom, and how to undo mistakes.

• The side panel on the left holds the editor's tools: Select (V) to choose and move map elements, Pan (H) to move around the canvas, Draw interior wall (D), Draw exterior wall (Shift+D) and Draw area (R) for rectangles. Select a tool or press its key to switch. The active tool stays highlighted.
• The editor opens with the Pan tool active. Drag anywhere on the canvas to move around the map.
• With any other tool, hold Space to pan for a moment. Drag the canvas with Space held, then release Space to go back to your tool.
• You can also pan at any time when you scroll with your trackpad or mouse wheel. You do not need to switch tools.
• Zoom with the + and − buttons at the top right. Or hold Ctrl (Cmd on Mac) while you scroll to zoom in on the exact spot under your cursor.
• If you lose your place, select the fit-to-content button below the zoom buttons. The entire map comes back into view.
• You can undo any change. Press Ctrl+Z (Cmd+Z on Mac) to undo and Ctrl+Shift+Z to redo, or use the 2 arrow buttons at the top left. The trash button next to them deletes what you selected.
• For a reminder, open the Help panel at the bottom right. It holds answers about the current workflow, video tutorials and the full list of keyboard shortcuts.

Tip: The Tutorials section of the Help panel has short videos of everything in this article.

Draw walls and areas

Add missing structure to your map. Draw interior and exterior walls one straight segment at a time, or outline rectangular rooms with the Area tool in a single gesture. Snapping keeps new walls connected and straight as you draw.

• Pick a wall type in the side panel: Draw interior wall (D) for walls inside the space, or Draw exterior wall (Shift+D) for the boundary of the floor. Exterior walls are thicker and darker, so the outline of the space stands out.
• Press the mouse button where the wall starts, drag, and release where it ends. Each press, drag and release adds one straight wall segment. A dashed preview shows the segment while you drag.
• Start or end a segment near existing geometry, and it snaps into place before you release. A snap indicator shows the exact connection point: a small blue circle for wall endpoints, a triangle for midpoints and a three-ray star for wall edges. Walls join cleanly without manual alignment.
• Hold Shift while you drag to lock the segment to fixed angles in 15° steps, including exactly horizontal, vertical and diagonal walls. Release Shift during the drag to go back to free-form drawing.
• To discard a segment before it commits, press Esc while you drag.
• Switch to the Draw area tool (R) to outline a rectangular room in one gesture. Press at one corner, drag to the opposite corner and release. The edges of the rectangle snap into line with nearby walls as you size it.
• Hold Shift while you size an area to keep it a perfect square. Or click without dragging to drop a ready-made square area centered on that spot.
• When you release, the editor draws the new area as interior walls, selects it and switches back to Select. You can move or reshape what you drew right away.

Select, move and duplicate elements

Everything in the editor starts with a selection. Select single elements or many at once, move them together with snap guides, nudge them into exact position, and duplicate repeated structures with copy and paste.

• Activate the Select tool (V) and click any element to select it. Click an empty part of the canvas or press Esc to clear the selection.
• Hold Shift and click to add an element to the selection, or to remove one that is already selected.
• To select many elements at once, press on an empty part of the canvas and drag a selection box. The editor selects everything the box touches when you release. Hold Shift while you drag to add to the current selection. A counter at the bottom of the canvas shows how many elements you selected.
• Drag any selected element to move the whole selection together. Alignment guides appear as it snaps into line with nearby geometry. If you drag an element that is not selected, you move only that element, and it stays selected.
• For fine positioning, press the arrow keys to nudge the selection one pixel at a time. Hold Shift with an arrow key for larger steps. You can undo a whole run of nudges in one step.
• Copy the selection with Ctrl+C (Cmd+C on Mac) and paste with Ctrl+V (Cmd+V on Mac). The copy lands slightly offset and already selected. Each further paste lands a little further away, so repeated pastes never pile up.
• The floating bar above the selection has one-click Duplicate and Delete. Copy, Paste and Delete are also on the right-click menu. When you right-click an element, the editor selects it first.

• Delete removes everything you selected. Press Delete or Backspace, or use the trash button in the top-left toolbar.

  Note: Very large selections have a safety limit. The editor refuses to copy or drag more than 500 elements at once and shows a warning. Work in smaller batches instead.

Reshape walls and shapes

Fix geometry without redrawing it. Drag wall endpoints and shape corners with precise snapping, add or remove corners, cut edges, close or open outlines, and correct the type of a wall after you draw it.

[GIF: dragging a wall endpoint onto another wall with the snap indicator visible]

• Select a wall with the Select tool (V), and handles appear at both endpoints. Drag a handle to reshape the wall. It snaps to nearby geometry, and the indicator shows what it caught. Hold Shift to lock the drag to fixed angles.
• Hold Alt while you drag an endpoint to snap it onto the body of another wall. The indicator marks the exact landing point. Hold Ctrl (Cmd on Mac) instead to turn off all snapping and place the endpoint freely.
• Multi-corner shapes, such as areas, open in resize mode when you select them. Select Edit in the floating bar above the selection to switch to corner editing. A handle appears on every corner.
• Drag a corner handle to move it. It aligns with its neighboring corners, and guides appear when a segment is exactly horizontal or vertical. Hold Shift to snap the angle of the corner to 45°, 90°, 135° or straight.
• To add detail, press the small ghost handle at the midpoint of a segment. The editor inserts a new corner that follows your pointer in the same motion. A quick click inserts it without dragging.
• Right-click a corner handle and select Remove vertex to simplify the shape. The option appears only when the shape stays valid without that corner.
• Right-click the ghost handle of a segment and select Delete edge to cut that segment out. A closed outline opens there, an end segment is trimmed off, and a middle segment splits the line in two.
• To seal an outline, drag its 2 ends close together, right-click an end corner and select Close shape. To unseal a closed shape, right-click any corner and select Open shape.
• To change the type of a wall, select it and use the wall type dropdown on the Select tool row in the side panel. Switch between interior and exterior. A mixed selection shows "Mixed" until you pick one type for all.

Resize and rotate shapes

Scale, rotate and move whole shapes without touching single corners. Multi-corner shapes open in resize mode. Anchors resize them, and a handle rotates them with snap-to-angle precision. The Edit and Done buttons in the floating bar switch between this mode and corner editing.

• Select a multi-corner shape, such as an area. It opens in resize mode, framed by anchors. Two-point walls do not have this mode. You always edit their endpoints directly.
• Drag a corner anchor to resize the shape freely, or hold Shift while you drag to keep its proportions. The anchors on the sides stretch the shape in one direction at a time.
• While you resize, the moving edges snap into line with nearby geometry, and guide lines mark the match. Hold Ctrl (Cmd on Mac) to turn off snapping and size the shape freely.
• Drag the rotate handle above the shape to rotate it around its center. The rotation clicks into place every 15°, so square and diagonal orientations come out exact.
• To move the shape and stay in resize mode, drag the four-arrows handle next to it, or drag the shape itself. You get the same alignment guides as a normal move.
• To adjust a single corner instead, select Edit in the floating bar to switch to corner editing. Select Done to go back to resize mode.
• Each resize or rotation is one undo step. Press Ctrl+Z (Cmd+Z on Mac) to put the shape back.

Map elements and the floor boundary

An existing map includes more than walls: furniture, labels, decor regions and accessibility symbols. It also has the floor boundary, which keeps every change inside the space.

• When you edit an existing map, its non-wall elements appear too: furniture, street and room labels, decor regions such as pathways and terraces, and accessibility symbols. You select, move and delete all of them exactly like walls: click, marquee, drag, nudge, copy and paste.
• Furniture, labels and decor regions move as fixed objects. They have no corner handles and no resize mode. You can move or delete labels, but you cannot edit their text here.
• Accessibility symbols work like shapes in resize mode. Drag the anchors to resize (hold Shift to keep proportions), turn the rotate handle (it clicks every 15°) and move the symbol as one unit. You cannot edit its separate parts.
• Right-click an accessibility symbol to show or hide its background. The background is the white plate behind the symbol that keeps it readable on a busy floor plan.
• The dimmed area around the map is outside the floor boundary, and the editor keeps your work inside the boundary. With a drawing tool, the cursor shows "not allowed" in the dimmed area, and no wall or area can start there.
• Moves stay inside the boundary too. If you drag, nudge, resize or paste something toward the edge, it stops flush at the boundary and slides along it.
• Elements that were outside the floor when the map was imported stay visible but dimmed. If you move one and leave it outside, a red outline shows that it still needs to move inside. The outline clears when the element lands inside the floor, or when you undo.
• The boundary comes from the floor outline of the map. You cannot select or move it. It is the fixed reference that everything else stays inside.

Keyboard shortcuts

Common questions

These answers cover questions people often ask about the Map Editor.

Should I draw desks on the map?

No. The map is the background image for your floor. After you save it, you add interactive resources such as desks and spaces in a separate step. There, people can book them and you can manage them.

What file types can I upload?

CAD files in .dxf format.

Can I edit a map the Robin map team built for me?

Yes. Open it in the Map Editor like any existing map, and adjust it when the space changes.

Why can't I draw outside the dimmed edge of my map?

That is the floor boundary. The editor keeps all elements inside the floor outline so your map stays valid. See Map elements and the floor boundary above.