Features — RoughLine AV

From the architect's plan to a signed proposal

Four steps. The parts everyone hates — schedules, cable lengths, rack loads, pricing — fall out of the design instead of being typed twice.

Import the plan, set the scale

Bring in the architect's PDF or DXF, click two points on a dimension you know, and every measurement afterwards is real. Rooms trace themselves from the walls, doorways included.

PDF, DXF, or a photo of a markup
Rooms detected from walls, with ceiling heights
Multiple floors, each with its own plan

In-ceiling coverage at 3'-6" ear height

Coverage you can show a client

Speaker dispersion at ear height. Camera fields of view cut off by walls, with Identify, Recognize, Observe and Detect distances. Predicted Wi-Fi by band, with real loss through drywall, brick, low-E glass and metal.

Fill a room with ceiling speakers on correct spacing
Per-room coverage percentages
Projector throw ranges and light pools

The walls trace themselves

Import the architect's PDF and the app reads it for long straight runs, then offers them as walls. You set how dark a line has to count and the shortest wall worth keeping; the results are drawn over the plan first, so nothing is added until you say so.

Furniture, dimension lines and title blocks are left behind
Put the import on a locked layer and trace over it
Hide a layer and it leaves the drawings too

It misses curves and occasionally grabs a dimension line, so treat it as the first pass that saves an hour, not as the finished drawing.

Reading an architect's plan

Predicted Wi-Fi, 5 GHz, with wall losses

Show them why the third access point isn't optional

Signal is predicted per band with real path loss and per-material wall penalties — drywall, brick, low-E glass, metal. Drag an access point and the map redraws as you move it.

2.4, 5 and 6 GHz, each with its own map
Transmit power per access point
Dead zones visible before the drywall goes up

Camera coverage, cut off by the walls

Every camera draws its true field of view, clipped by the building, with the distances at which you can Detect, Observe, Recognize and Identify. Change the lens and the bands move.

Blind spots appear on the drawing, not on site
Night range shown separately
Pixel density per foot at any distance

Field of view with DORI detail bands

The paperwork writes itself

Every device home-runs to a head-end. Cable lengths include the rise, the drop, the service loop and the slack. Racks stack themselves and report PoE load, watts and heat.

Cable schedule with printable labels
Rack elevations with PoE and BTU per rack
Design checks before anything gets ordered

Everything on one canvas

No round trips between a drawing tool, a Wi-Fi predictor, a camera calculator and a proposal writer.

Audio that lands

Floor-standing, in-wall, in-ceiling, outdoor and landscape, with dispersion, sensitivity and level at the listening position. Atmos layout checks for theaters.

Cameras with real fields of view

Lens ranges, IR distance, and pixel density bands. Walls block sight lines, so blind spots show up on the drawing rather than on site.

Wi-Fi you can defend

Per-band prediction with path loss and wall materials, plus AP power settings. Show the client why the third access point isn't optional.

Racks and power

Elevations build themselves from what you assign. PoE against switch budget, ports used, watts and BTU per hour, with warnings before you're over.

Walls without the tracing

Point it at the architect's PDF and it finds the walls for you, leaving the furniture and dimension lines behind. Layers keep what you traced separate from what came in.

Drawings the trades accept

Vector PDF sets with a title block, a sheet per system, legends and schedules. DXF with a layer per system, so the architect can drop it in.

Priced as you design

Your pricing, your labor rate, your markup. Accessories and wire pull in automatically. Good, better and best swaps keep every location.

Rough-in the electrician can follow

Outlets, data and low-voltage boxes dimensioned off the walls, with heights above the floor and side-by-side boxes as one symbol. Overall and wall-by-wall dimensions on the plan and the PDF.

Fast to drive

A command search for any tool or product, right-click and long-press menus, a quick bar for the things you toggle all day, and menus grouped the way a job actually runs.

Where it fits next to what you already use

Bluebeam and System Surveyor are both good at what they were built for. Neither was built to predict coverage or to turn a plan into cable lengths and rack loads.

	RoughLine AV	Bluebeam Revu	System Surveyor
Built for	AV and low-voltage system design	PDF markup and takeoff for construction	Site surveys and system documentation
Speaker dispersion and SPL	Yes, at ear height, with array spacing	No	Not its focus
Predicted Wi-Fi heatmaps	Per band, with wall-material losses	No	No
Camera field of view	Clipped by walls, with DORI bands	No	Yes
Cable schedule with lengths	Routed, with rise, drop and service loop	Measure by hand	Not calculated
Rack elevations, PoE and heat	Built from what you assign	No	No
Product library with real specs	600+ products, 120+ brands	Symbols only	Yes, device library
Client-facing proposal	Branded, priced, with signature block	No	Reports and BOM
DXF in and out	Layer per system	Yes, with CAD tools	Varies by plan
Price, one user	$29 a month, $290 a year	$260 to $590 per user a year	Free tier; paid from about $55 per user a month
Price, five users	$89 a month, $17.80 a seat	$1,300 to $2,950 a year	About $275 a month

Competitor details and prices are as published in September 2026 and change often — check their current plans before deciding. Bluebeam remains the better tool for marking up and comparing construction documents, and plenty of integrators will keep both. System Surveyor is strong on field survey workflow and photo documentation across security work. The difference here is coverage prediction and the engineering that falls out of it: cable lengths, rack loads, PoE budgets and design checks.

Everything RoughLine AV does