Map Cleaner // User Guide

01

Getting Started

Map Cleaner helps you clean up architectural PDF floor plans by analyzing every drawing element and letting you filter, select, and remove unwanted content — furniture, electrical symbols, plumbing, dimensions, hatching, and more.

Loading a PDF

Drag and drop a PDF onto the canvas area, or click to browse. The PDF renders immediately and you can pan (middle mouse) and zoom (scroll wheel) right away.

Analyzing

Click the green Analyze button in the sidebar. The app parses the PDF content stream, extracts every drawing element, and categorizes them by color, line weight, shape type, and size. This may take a few seconds for large files. A loading spinner appears automatically if the PDF takes more than a second to process.

After analysis, the filter panels appear in the sidebar and you can start cleaning. PDFs with a /Rotate flag (common in architectural plans scanned or saved in landscape orientation) are handled automatically and display correctly.

Decode Text

After analysis, a Decode Text button appears below the Analyze button. Some PDFs use custom font encodings that cause text to display as random symbols or garbled characters. Click Decode Text to auto-detect the character mapping offset for each font and fix the displayed text.

Replacing the PDF

You can drop a new PDF onto the canvas area at any time while working. A confirmation dialog appears before replacing the current session, so you won't lose work by accident.

02

Interface

Sidebar

The left sidebar contains all filter controls (in a single "Filters" accordion), lock groups, and the deleted items bin. Each section is collapsible — click the header to toggle.

Properties Panel

The right side panel is always visible and shows details of the currently selected element — color, line weight, shape type, size, and path length.

Canvas

The main area displays the PDF with a dark grid background. The white area is the page. All visible elements render here, along with placed icons and evacuation routes. A contiguous selection slider appears at the bottom of the canvas with a frontier glow effect when elements are selected.

Toolbar (Top-Left)

Header

Shows the app logo, loaded filename, and the Export Clean PDF button.

03

Filters

Filters work with AND logic between dimensions and OR logic within each dimension. An element is visible only if its color AND weight AND shape type all pass.

Colors

Every distinct color found in the PDF gets a checkbox with a color swatch. Uncheck a color to hide all elements using it. Use All / None for quick toggling.

Line Weights

Shows each distinct line weight found. Heavy weights are typically walls; light weights are dimensions and detail lines.

Shape Types

Elements are classified as Lines, Curves, Mixed, Rectangles, or Text. Toggle each type on/off.

Size Filters

Min/max inputs for Path Length and Bbox Area. Enter a value to hide elements below or above that threshold.

Fonts & Text Sizes

Filter text by font family or point size. Each distinct font and size found in the PDF gets its own checkbox.

Lock Text

The canvas toolbar includes a Lock Text button (padlock with T icon). When enabled, text elements cannot be selected by clicking or marquee dragging. This is useful when cleaning up vector elements (lines, curves, shapes) without accidentally selecting text that overlaps them. Click the button again to unlock text and make it selectable.

Ghost Layer

The ghost icon in the canvas toolbar controls the visibility of filtered-out elements. These appear as faint shapes behind the visible content so you can reference what's been hidden without re-enabling filters. Deleted elements are not shown in the ghost layer.

Click the ghost icon to open the control panel:

04

Selection

Selection works like professional graphic design software. You must click directly on an element's path — not just inside its bounding box.

Action How
Select element Click on it
Add/remove from selection Shift + Click
Select all with same properties Ctrl + Click
Marquee select Click + drag on empty area
Toggle marquee Shift + drag
Select all visible Ctrl + A
Deselect all Escape
Delete selected Delete / Backspace

Selected elements render in orange. Marquee selection checks actual path intersection, not just bounding boxes.

Large Selections

When a selection contains more than 5,000 elements, the app switches to a lightweight display mode: instead of highlighting each element individually, a dashed orange bounding box is drawn around the entire selection area and an info message shows the element count. This prevents the browser from freezing when working with very dense drawings.

Select Exact & Select Similar

Select Exact finds all elements that are an exact match on color, weight, shape, and pathLength. Select Similar uses exact color/weight/shape but allows ±3% pathLength tolerance. For text elements, Select Similar matches by font name and ±20% font size.

Right-Click Context Menu

05

Lock Groups & Pattern Matching

Lock Groups let you define reusable patterns — like "Doors" or "Grid Bubbles" — and automatically find all matching elements across the drawing. Locked elements render green on the canvas (including text) and are protected from selection and deletion.

Creating a Lock Group

  1. Select the elements that form the pattern (e.g., the parts of one door)
  2. Right-click → Create Lock Group..., or use the Quick Lock button in the toolbar for instant locking
  3. Name it (e.g., "Doors")
  4. The app scans the entire element list for matches and adds them to the group
  5. All matches are selected so you can see them

Group Pattern (Cluster-Based)

The Group Pattern system uses cluster-based matching: element order does not matter, matching uses ±5% path length and ±50% bounding box area tolerance, and handles rotation and mirroring of repeated elements.

A precision slider (tight to loose) controls match sensitivity. Group Pattern auto-selects matches and updates live as your selection changes.

Sequence Pattern (Legacy)

The sequence pattern captures: element order, colors, line weights, shape types, segment counts, bounding box dimensions (±10%), and path length (±10%). Skips between elements are preserved as wildcards.

Tuning a Group

Click the arrow next to a group to expand its detail panel. Uncheck individual match fields to broaden the search — the group re-runs live and the count updates. For example, unchecking Width and Height catches doors of different sizes.

Locking & Unlocking

Locked elements are skipped by click, marquee, select-all, and select-similar. They render in green on the canvas. Right-click a locked element to Unlock it (removes it from its lock group).

Deleted Items Bin

Hidden elements go to the Deleted Items bin in the sidebar. Click any entry to restore it. Use Restore All to bring everything back.

06

Crop

Click the crop icon in the top-left toolbar to activate crop mode.

The crop applies to both the canvas view and the exported PDF. Elements entirely outside the crop area are excluded from the export. Cropping also improves rendering performance — elements outside the crop boundary are skipped during drawing, so cropping out dense areas of a plan makes the canvas noticeably faster.

07

Export

Click Export Clean PDF in the header to generate a fresh PDF from the current canvas state.

What's Included

Export Image (PNG / JPG)

Click Export Image to export the current view as a raster image. A dialog lets you configure:

The dialog shows projected pixel dimensions and estimated file size as you adjust settings. The exported image includes all visible elements and text, respecting crop and rotation. Raster images render identically in every viewer — no PDF rendering differences between applications.

Multi-Page PDFs

When loading a multi-page PDF, a page picker with thumbnails appears. Thumbnails load progressively (scroll priority, 200px @ 90% JPEG quality). Select a page to extract and analyze it individually for faster performance.

Crop

If a crop is set, the exported PDF uses the crop dimensions as the page size. Elements outside the crop area are excluded entirely — they won't be hidden content in the file.

Font

Text is embedded using Roboto Regular. The font is stored in the output PDF so text is selectable in any PDF viewer.

08

Keyboard Shortcuts

Shortcut Action
Middle Mouse + drag Pan
Scroll wheel Zoom
Click Select element
Shift + Click Add/remove from selection
Ctrl + Click Select all similar
Drag on empty Marquee select
Shift + Drag Toggle marquee
Ctrl + A Select all visible
Escape Deselect / close crop
Delete Delete selected
Ctrl + Z Undo
Ctrl + Shift + Z Redo
Ctrl + Y Redo
Enter Apply crop
Right-click Context menu

Lock Text is a button toggle in the canvas toolbar (padlock with T icon). Decode Text is a button below the Analyze button in the sidebar.

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