Dahua's Project Design Tool is fine for pure-Dahua projects — product selection, scene simulation, blind-spot checks. The moment your tender requires multi-vendor parity, NDAA Section 889 compliance, or EU data residency, the Dahua tool stops being enough. CCTVplanner runs all 65,000+ cameras across 113 brands on one canvas — flagging NDAA exposure per camera and suggesting compliant swaps in one click.
Free tier · No credit card · Browser-based
Dahua Project Design Tool renders only Dahua and Dahua OEM hardware. Public-sector tenders increasingly require multi-vendor designs alongside NDAA-compliant alternatives. The Dahua tool cannot draw what is not in its catalog — Hikvision, Axis, Bosch, Hanwha all live in separate tools.
Dahua is on the NDAA Section 889 covered list — barred from US federal procurement and many state, local and private RFPs. The Dahua tool does not flag this exposure, does not suggest compliant swaps, and does not help your customer pass an audit. CCTVplanner does all three.
Dahua's tooling runs on Dahua infrastructure (China + global CDN). Customer floor plans, BOMs and site survey data follow that path. CCTVplanner runs frontend on Polish lh.pl + Supabase EU-West. Your customer's data never leaves the EU. Cleaner for GDPR audits, simpler for public-sector tenders.
Dahua Project Design Tool ships the Dahua catalog. CCTVplanner ships 2 501 Dahua models (every IPC, SD, HFW, HDW, EBT, PFM line) plus 79 other brands — Hikvision, Axis, Bosch, Hanwha, Uniview, Pelco, i-PRO, Vivotek and more.
Drop a Dahua IPC-HFW3849 next to a Hikvision DS-2CD2T87 next to an Axis P3265 — same canvas, same EN 62676-4 lens math, same DORI rings (25/62.5/125/250 px/m). The BOM aggregates Dahua SKUs with non-Dahua SKUs cleanly for procurement.
Per-camera NDAA Section 889 flag. Click any Dahua camera in your design and CCTVplanner suggests equivalent NDAA-clean alternatives — Bosch, Axis, Hanwha or i-PRO matched on sensor format, focal range, IR distance and IP/IK rating. One-click swap regenerates the design and BOM.
Stack unlimited floors, route cabling between them, and the topology graph computes PoE budget, switch placement, NVR sizing and full BOM for the entire building. Mezzanines, multi-storey retail, hospital wings and warehouse pick-towers all fit in one project.
Import architect's DXF with full BLOCK/INSERT/SPLINE/HATCH coverage. Export DXF for the trenching crew, branded PDF for the customer, CSV BOM for the procurement team. Works with any VMS — Dahua DSS, Hikvision iVMS, Genetec, Milestone, Avigilon — design once, deploy anywhere.
| CCTVplanner | Dahua Project Design Tool | |
|---|---|---|
| Camera catalog | 65,000+ models · 113 brands (incl. 2 501 Dahua) | Dahua only |
| NDAA 889 compliance flagging | Per-camera flag + swap suggestions | Not addressed |
| Multi-vendor projects | Native — any brand, same canvas | Dahua-locked, separate tool needed |
| Multi-floor topology with cabling | Yes — unlimited floors, daisy-chain cabling | Not advertised |
| DXF import/export | Yes — full BLOCK/INSERT/SPLINE/HATCH/DIMENSION | Not advertised |
| Languages | 33 (incl. Arabic RTL, Hindi, Vietnamese) | Limited language coverage |
| Hosting | EU (Poland frontend, EU-West backend) | Dahua infrastructure (China + global) |
Everything below is in the product today, on the free tier, and none of it needs an install. Open it in a browser and check it against Dahua Project Design Tool on a job you already know.
No install and no workstation. Walk the site from any camera point of view, with DORI silhouettes standing at the Detect, Observe, Recognize and Identify distances so the customer sees what the camera sees. Sun and shadow study for the time of day that matters, and one-click 3D PDF export for the people who will never open a design tool.
Every cone is computed from the sensor, resolution and focal length at the mounting height (1 to 20 m) and tilt you set, then clipped by buildings, fences and real ground elevation on satellite imagery. On a flat indoor floor a 2D tool agrees with us. On a sloped yard or a sunken loading dock it does not, and that gap is exactly where the blind spots are.
Racking, containers, concrete blocks, scaffolding, solar panels, trees, and the machinery a live construction site actually parks in the shot: excavators, cranes, concrete mixers, bulldozers, vans and pickups. Each one carries real dimensions and a vertical range, and the field of view clips against it with the shadow drawn on the plan.
Stack ground floor, mezzanine, plant room and roof as separate levels. Draw walls, close rooms and read the floor area back in square metres. Cabling routes between levels, the topology graph carries across them, and each floor exports as its own DXF sheet and PDF page.
Predictive coverage for access points using ITU-R P.2040 wall transmission and a P.1238 margin, drawn as a heatmap over the same plan the cameras sit on. Point-to-point links are checked for line of sight against the buildings and terrain, so the wireless leg of the design fails on screen rather than on site.
51 specified cable types with PoE budget from loop resistance, DC voltage drop, fibre loss budget with splice and connector allowances, coax attenuation per format, speaker line loading and conduit fill. Route length is measured on the drawn route and carries straight into the bill of materials, the cable schedule and the customer offer.
The plan is validated while you draw it: DORI shortfall, blind spots, perimeter gaps, PoE budget and class escalation, cable length and category headroom, conduit bundling, fibre loss, thermal lens and pairing, EMC and environmental class, lightning protection zones, ONVIF profile mixing, NDAA compliance, bandwidth headroom and switch port capacity.
CAD-grade DXF (AutoCAD R2018 / AC1021) on named layers with BLOCK, INSERT, SPLINE, ELLIPSE, HATCH and DIMENSION preserved, inside an ISO 5457 sheet frame with an ISO 7200 title block. Multi-page PDF with bill of materials, cable schedule, equipment list, elevation views, coverage analysis, acceptance test protocol, maintenance schedule and the GDPR Article 35 DPIA worksheet.
It is not a bad tool — for pure-Dahua projects it does the job: product selection, scene simulation, blind-spot identification, basic reports. The reason to use CCTVplanner instead is the moment a tender requires multi-vendor cameras, NDAA Section 889 compliance, EU data residency, or DXF interchange with the architect. The Dahua tool was built to sell Dahua hardware. CCTVplanner is built to design surveillance projects regardless of brand.
Yes. CCTVplanner ships 2 501 Dahua models — every IPC bullet, dome, SD PTZ, multi-sensor panoramic, HDCVI hybrid and thermal model. Sensor active widths, lens ranges, IR distances and IP/IK ratings come from Dahua datasheets. A pure-Dahua project on CCTVplanner is identical in coverage to the Dahua tool, with the option to mix in non-Dahua cameras when a tender requires it.
Dahua is on the NDAA Section 889 covered list — barred from US federal procurement and many state, local and private RFPs. CCTVplanner flags every Dahua camera in the BOM and offers equivalent NDAA-clean alternatives, typically Axis, Bosch, Hanwha or i-PRO models matched on sensor format, focal length range, IR distance and IP/IK rating. One-click swap regenerates the design and BOM. See our NDAA reference for the full list and swap matrix.
We export branded PDF, DXF and CSV BOM. The CSV BOM lists Dahua SKUs + accessories which the procurement team uses to source hardware; the DXF goes to the trenching/cabling contractor; the PDF goes to the customer for sign-off. After install, the integrator imports cameras into Dahua DSS by IP scan or QR — no project file format is required between design and operation. Design in CCTVplanner, deploy in DSS.
65,000+ cameras, 113 brands, NDAA-aware swaps. Free tier covers 2 projects and 6 cameras. No credit card.
