Scanning rooms to collect 3D geometry is a breeze. After just a few practice scans, you will get the hang of it.
Calibrate and start a scan
To get the fastest calibration time (1-3 seconds) follow these tips
Start at the bottom edge of a wall
Have a clear view of the edge i.e. avoid items like furniture that might block the view
When prompted, point the camera at the top edge of wall
Once the white guiding lines appear, you're done with calibration and can start scanning!
Capture room details quickly and accurately
Once the white lines appear, you are now recording 3D geometry.
You don't need to wait for white lines to catch up to get every detail on screen before moving to a new area of the room
Imagine you are filming a video of the room that gets a clear picture of all of the walls in the room
Rotate around the room, ideally 5-10 ft away from walls. The wider the field of view, the faster we can pick up details.
Don't worry about going too fast - the app will alert you to slow down if needed
Scan one room/zone or one building story at a time
We recommend scanning room-by-room (or a collection of rooms that you consider a zone) or one story at a time. Amply does not support scanning multiple floors in one pass.
Ductless mini-splits (single or multizone): We recommend room-by-room so that you can pair equipment visualization with the loads.
This will also enable the most accurate Adequate Exposure Diversity and peak solar gain calculations
For example, if you have one indoor unit serving a kitchen and open living room, scan that space as a single "room"
Unitary or central air: We recommend scanning each conditioned building story separately
For example, if you have a two-story home, with a below-grade unconditioned basement, you would scan the 1st story and the 2nd story
When scanning an entire story, be sure to capture all hallways, bathrooms, etc - any conditioned area of the building
Special LiDAR considerations
Lighting: Scans will be most accurate with good light
A few tips:
Turn on lights
Open curtains to let in more light. This also helps capture window geometry more accurately.
If the room is too dark, the app will automatically warn you of low light conditions
Scanning and LiDAR limitations
Multiple Stories: We do not support scanning multiple stories at a time. See above for more details.
Large mirrors: Ceiling-to-floor mirrors may confuse the 3D scanning capability, avoid them if you can
LiDAR throw distance:
iPad LiDAR has a max range of ~15 ft
Ceilings or walls outside of that range may be hard to capture.
Very dark surfaces:
Objects with very dark surfaces might not be able to be scanned.
Window curtains can prevent proper window capture
Curtains or other window treatments may prevent widows from being accurately measured. Open curtains to both let in more light and prevent window dimensions from being obscured.
Ceilings and Skylights
At the moment, we don't support automatic scanning of skylights or visualization of ceilings.
Ceilings: We don't visualize ceilings because they would impair your view of the room when reviewing the 3D model. But rest assured, we are computing and modeling ceiling surface areas behind the scenes to ensure accurate load calculations
Skylights: Since skylights are a sub-component of ceilings and due to other technical challenges, we can't automatically measure their geometry. Instead, we provide an option for adding skylights with a few taps to any room after you have completed a scan and are viewing the 3D model.