The Global Archicad Community

[Karl Ottenstein]

Update to my post below...

Now that the iPhone 12 Pro has the built-in LiDAR sensor, it as well as the 2020 iPad Pros can be used directly with the free Canvas app without any additional hardware to scan interior spaces.

The other news in my inbox today is that they will give anyone who purchased their Structure Sensor hardware a credit, upon its return, good for scan-to-cad processing. And, they've now added native Chief Architect output to the existing 3D formats of SketchUp, Revit, IFC, dae and dwg.

https://canvas.io/pricing

I've not yet tried a scan with my iPad Pro, but I'm sure my same caveats below regarding accuracy of the 3D model will apply.

[spodonahue]

I just purchased the new iPad Pro (12.9) with LiDAR, I'm going to do my first real test on a project with the scan to CAD/IFC-REViT and will see how that goes. With the new iPad Canvas has stated that they are getting measurements that surpass 15' (4.57m) because of its better sensor. My next test Its going to be a challenging space, round and dome shaped rooms, angled walls, walls that are higher than 15'... I'll let you know how it turns out. Thanks for the updates~!

[Karl Ottenstein]

Look forward to hearing how things work for you, Shawn! Angled/curved surfaces are something I didn't try... will be very interesting to see how they come out.

Be sure to watch the video on the Canvas site on how to slowly 'paint' the space. If you go too quickly, or re-paint the same area from a different angle, there can be weird errors. You can see the issues in the navigate-able mesh for free within the app before you submit the file. Unfortunately, the only fix is to rescan the entire space. "Paint" too slowly and you won't finish the scan before you run out of memory. Note that you don't have to scan the entire floor, only where it meets the walls, or where there are steps. Ditto ceiling - can skip entire areas that are the same level as some edge. Still, I found for a large room, I had to combine two scans, as there was too much detail to grab to make it all the way around the room before I ran out of RAM. I was using an old iPad Pro with 4 GB RAM ... the 2020 ones (and iPhones) have 6 GB which should help, along with their faster processors.