What a zone is for
A zone is a polygon on the drawing that groups markers by location. Every marker falling inside a zone gets counted in that zone's column of the Excel export. Linear and Area markers that cross a zone boundary are clipped — only the part inside counts.
Use zones when you need:
- Per-room or per-area totals —
Office 1,Office 2,Reception, etc. - Per-floor totals on a sheet that shows multiple levels.
- Per-phase totals on a phased project shown on one drawing.
- A breakdown along any other geographic line that matters to you.
Without zones, the export rolls everything into one All column. With zones, each zone gets its own column plus an Uncategorized column for markers outside any zone.
For the AOI vs Zone distinction: AOIs and zones explained.
The Zones & AOIs panel
Zones live in the same dropdown as AOIs — open it from the Zones & AOIs button in the sidebar's marker list toolbar (visible in Stage 2).
Scroll past the AOIs section to find the Zones section. From here you can show/hide, lock, and create zones.
Section-level controls
Three buttons sit at the top of the Zones section:
- Lock zones / — locked zones can't be moved or deleted. The delete button shows "Unlock Zones before deleting" when locked.
- Show/hide zones / — toggles whether zones are drawn on the canvas. They still count for the export when hidden.
- Create new zone — enters draw mode.
If the project has no zones yet, the section shows "No Zones".
Creating a zone
- 1
In the Zones section, click + ("Create new zone").
- 2
On the drawing, click at the first corner of your zone.
- 3
Hold CTRL and click for each subsequent corner (CMD on macOS).
- 4
Right-click to close the polygon.
- 5
The zone appears in the list with a default name and colour.
Naming a zone
Each zone has an editable label inline:
- 1
In the Zones list, double-click the zone's name.
- 2
Type the new name. This is the column header in the Excel export, so pick something meaningful —
Office 1,Stairwell A,Level 3 — Corridor. - 3
Press ↵ to save.
Recolouring a zone
- 1
Click the colour swatch at the left of the zone's row.
- 2
Pick a colour from the 6-column grid.
- 3
Optionally adjust the Opacity slider (5% to 100%).
- 4
Click Apply.
The zone's overlay on the canvas updates immediately. Zone colour is purely visual — it doesn't affect counts.
Deleting a zone
- 1
Unlock zones if they're locked.
- 2
Click the trash button on the zone's row.
- 3
The zone is removed immediately. There's no confirmation — be sure first.
Markers that were inside the deleted zone aren't removed — they just stop being assigned to anything, so they'll roll into Uncategorized in the next export.
Editing zone boundaries
A placed zone has corner handles. You can:
- Drag a corner — move that point.
- Drag the middle of an edge — add a new corner.
- Drag the whole polygon — move the zone without changing shape.
If locked, none of these work. Unlock the section first.
Marker counts per zone
ZeroCount works out which markers fall inside each zone automatically:
- Detection / Unit markers — a marker is "in" a zone if its centre point is inside the zone polygon.
- Linear markers — the portion of the polyline inside the zone is clipped and counted in that zone's length.
- Area markers — the portion of the polygon inside the zone is clipped and counted in that zone's area.
The counts appear in:
- The ZoneSection of the sidebar when you're in Zones view (the project marker summary panel's view-mode toggle).
- The per-zone columns of the Excel export.
Showing markers grouped by zone in the sidebar
The sidebar's view-mode button can switch from the default "Detection" view to a Zones view . In Zones view, marker groups nest underneath their parent zones, so you can see at a glance how each zone's count breaks down.
See Marker groups.
Zones in the Excel export
In the per-file worksheets:
- One column per zone, with column headers showing the zone name.
- An Uncategorized column for markers outside any zone.
- A Total Quant column with the row sum.
In the Totals sheet:
- The column set is the union of zones across every drawing in the project.
- Identically-named zones across drawings combine into the same column.
See Exporting to Excel for the full structure.