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Scan a house with your iPhone

From a house with no drawings to a scaled plan in ix, with what is already installed marked on it.

4 min read

  1. What you need

    An iPhone or iPad with LiDAR: an iPhone 12 Pro or a later Pro or Pro Max, or an iPad Pro from 2020 on, with iOS 17 or later. You also need the ix Scan app. It is in early testing; ask us for an invitation (Account and support, below).

  2. Connect the phone to a project

    In ix Scan, press Sign in to ix and use your ix email and password. Then choose a project, or press New project and name it, right on the phone. Or, without signing in on the phone, open the project in ix on a computer, choose ⋯ → Scan rooms with iPhone…, and scan its QR code with the phone's camera (or type its 8-character code and the project number).

  3. Scan each room

    Press Scan a room and walk slowly around it with the camera on the walls; the phone coaches you. As you pass something already installed (a data port, TV, speaker, outlet, camera, access point or keypad), aim the crosshair at it and press Mark, pick what it is, and take a photo if it helps. Press Done when the outline is complete.

  4. Send it

    Check the room's top view, name it, pick its floor (Level 1, Level 2, Basement, or type one) and press Send to ix. With no signal, the scan waits on the phone and sends itself later. When every room of a floor is done, Merge rooms and send as one floor plan sends the whole floor together.

  5. See it in ix

    If the project had no plan, the plan is already drawn when you open it: walls, doors, windows, rooms with their areas, furniture and the things you marked, to scale, one sheet per floor. If the project already has the architect's plan, open ⋯ → Scan rooms with iPhone…, press Import, and drag the scan into place on that sheet.

  6. Decide what happens to what is there

    Select a marked device and, in Properties under Existing, choose Keep, Move or Remove. The drawing, the PDF and the client report all show (E), (R) or (D), and existing devices stay off the Bill of Materials.

    Tip. A device added on the phone's top view after the scan, rather than with the crosshair, has no measured height, and ix says "height not measured" instead of guessing one.

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