---
title: "Generating Maps"
slug: "generating-maps"
description: "You can generate maps for an  currently in the database."
tags: ["Advanced Management", "E57 Files", "Map Generation"]
updated: 2026-05-21T12:11:58Z
published: 2026-05-21T12:11:58Z
canonical: "knowledge.navvis.com/generating-maps"
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://knowledge.navvis.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Generating Maps

NavVis IVION Processing options update and synchronize datasets. When you modify point clouds and panoramas in an alignment bundle, your view and navigation in NavVis IVION stay consistent with your latest data.

- **Recreate Maps:** Updates the 2D map representations (top-down and side views) that are generated from the point clouds, so the visual footprint of the site matches the current datasets.
- **Recreate Navgraph:** Rebuilds the navigation graph that defines how users move through panoramas and along paths, so navigation remains logical and connected after structural or dataset changes.
- **Generate Visual Index:** Creates or updates the image-based index used by positioning components and image search, so that new or changed panoramas are correctly linked to their locations.

You can generate maps for an Alignment Bundle currently in the database.

1. Go to **Site Setup** >**Dataset Management**.

> [!NOTE]
> **Note:**.e57 files must have Normals to generate a map successfully.

1. Click **Advanced** next to the alignment bundle for which you want to add maps.

![](https://cdn.document360.io/bf174766-fa1a-4fe1-a4d7-b1db1e7cb996/Images/Documentation/image-1741186474748.png)
2. If you have already added maps and want to regenerate them, open the **Advanced** drop-down menu and click **Recreate Maps**.

![](https://cdn.document360.io/bf174766-fa1a-4fe1-a4d7-b1db1e7cb996/Images/Documentation/image-1741186624314.png)
3. Click **Publish**when you have finished, refer to [Publishing a draft](https://knowledge.navvis.com/docs/publishing-a-draft).

Bundles, specifically referred to as Alignment Bundles in NavVis IVION, are collections of related datasets that have been grouped together after being aligned. The primary purpose of creating an alignment bundle is to save the relative locations of these datasets to each other, enabling coordinated management and use within the system

Site refers to a complex of one or more buildings displayed in a NavVis IVION instance. For example, the Munich Airport would be one site. An instance can contain multiple sites. Each site consists of one or more datasets.

A dataset is a piece of a site, the result of a continuous recording with a NavVis mapping device or the result of an imported point cloud. Datasets can contain panoramic images and point clouds.

Normals are perpendicular to the tangent plane line at a particular point on the surface. They yield especially useful information about a curved surface's characteristics but conversely can tell us much about the planarity of a flat or angular surface also. Normals can tell us the rate of change of curvature when a surface has an angular departure and tell us just how perfectly flat something is.