WD Quick Walls — User Guide

Quick Start

Keyboard Shortcuts Panel

The left column shows slots 1 through 9, corresponding to Ekahau's wall-type keyboard shortcuts.

• Drag & drop a wall type card from the list onto a slot to assign it.
• Click the # button on any wall type to pick a slot from a menu.
• Click × on a slot to remove the assignment.
• Only one wall type per slot — assigning a new type to an occupied slot replaces the old one.

Wall Type List

The right panel shows every wall type in the project, sorted alphabetically. Each card displays the name, color swatch, RF attenuation values for 2.4 / 5 / 6 GHz bands, and wall thickness.

Button	Action
#	Assign or change the keyboard shortcut for this wall type
✎	Edit properties — name, color, thickness, propagation values
×	Delete the wall type from the project
+ Add Wall Type	Create a new custom wall type with your own values

Templates

Templates save a complete set of wall types and their keybind assignments, so you can instantly apply a consistent setup across projects.

Template Bar

Control	What it does
Template dropdown	Select a saved template to preview or apply
Apply	Replace the current wall types with the selected template
Save Template	Save the current wall types and shortcuts as a new template
Ekahau Defaults	Reset to Ekahau's factory-default wall types (no keybinds)
Manage	Import or export templates as .json files for sharing
Auto-apply on open	Automatically apply the last-used template when you open a file

Recommended by WD

The tool ships with a Recommended by WD template (marked with a star in the dropdown) that includes optimized colors for better differentiation between similar wall types — for example, Elevator Shafts use green and Steel Fire/Exit Doors use orange instead of the hard-to-distinguish grays in Ekahau's defaults.

Sharing Templates

Click Manage to open the Import / Export dialog. Templates are stored as .json files in the templates/ folder within the WD Wireless Tools directory. You can share template files with colleagues by exporting them and sending the .json file.

Adding & Editing Wall Types

Click + Add Wall Type to create one, or the ✎ button on an existing card to edit. Each wall type stores:

Name

Descriptive label shown in Ekahau's wall picker and on your floor plan (e.g. Concrete, Heavy or Interior Office). Match your organization's conventions so the same material has the same name across projects.

Color

The color Ekahau uses to render walls of this type on the floor plan. Pick something distinct — a well-chosen palette makes it easy to eyeball what's what during a survey. The WD-recommended template uses green for Elevator Shafts and orange for Steel Fire/Exit Doors because Ekahau's own defaults use grey for both.

Thickness

Real-world thickness of the wall. Ekahau stores this internally in meters, but Quick Walls lets you enter it in either inches or meters — flip the in / m pill next to the label. Your preference is remembered across sessions and auto-detects to imperial on US locales.

The value matters because Ekahau's simulation combines thickness with the attenuation numbers below to model signal loss. A 6-inch concrete wall attenuates differently from a 3-inch concrete wall even if the material is the same.

Keyboard shortcut

Bind the wall type to 1–9 so you can press that key inside Ekahau while drawing to switch to this wall type instantly. Shortcuts are persisted in the .esx file itself, so they travel with the project.

Propagation Properties (per band)

How radio waves interact with this wall at each of the three Wi-Fi bands (2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, 6 GHz):

• Attenuation — signal loss (dB) as a wave passes through the wall. Higher = more loss. This is the number that matters most for coverage modeling.
• Reflection coefficient — fraction of the signal that bounces back off the wall (0–1). Metal walls have high reflection; drywall barely reflects.
• Diffraction coefficient — how much the signal bends around the edges of the wall. Small angles matter for indoor coverage — this is why signals get around corners.

All three values match Ekahau's own wall-type schema exactly, so a wall type saved from Quick Walls behaves identically to one authored in Ekahau AI Pro. If in doubt, start from one of the Recommended by WD presets — they're calibrated against Ekahau's factory values with the color-legibility tweaks noted above.

Saving Your Work

Click Save .esx in the template bar to write your changes into a copy of the project file. A system file dialog lets you choose the name and location. The original file is never modified — you always save a new copy.

Keyboard Reference

Key	Action (in Ekahau)
1–9	Draw the wall type assigned to that slot
Esc	Cancel current wall drawing