Help & FAQ

BeaverPlot turns a walk through a room into an editable floor plan using your device's LiDAR sensor. From one scan you can export professional files (IFC for Revit, DXF for AutoCAD, PDF, USDZ for AR), create a listing-ready floor plan PDF, publish a shareable 3D tour link, and estimate materials. Outdoors, you can measure a lawn or yard from satellite imagery, or walk a deck or patio and tap its corners — both without scanning at all. And when a job grows beyond the quote, Work Tickets captures the extra work — photos, time & materials, and an on-screen signature — so it actually gets billed.

Room scanning needs an iPhone 12 Pro or newer Pro model, or an iPad Pro (2020 or newer), running iOS 26 or later — these have the LiDAR sensor. The calculators and site measurement work on any iPhone, with no LiDAR required. Measuring a surface with the camera needs no LiDAR either — an iPhone XS or later is enough.

Scanning, editing, calibration, the USDZ 3D/AR preview, site and surface measurement, work tickets, and every calculator are free. BeaverPlot Pro adds IFC, DXF, and PDF exports, shareable 3D tours, and watermark-free listing floor plans, measurement PDFs, and signed work tickets — with a 7-day free trial for new subscribers.

From the Dashboard, tap the scan button. Hold your device at about chest height, point it at the far side of the room, and pan slowly around. On-screen coaching guides you as walls, doors, and windows are detected.

Yes, and you should. Tap Next Room at each doorway rather than walking the whole home in one pass — scanning is designed around one enclosed room at a time, and a single continuous sweep of a large space produces fragmented walls and corners that don't close. BeaverPlot stitches the rooms into one floor plan.

Not with room scanning — it needs walls and corners, and LiDAR is the wrong tool outdoors anyway: it reaches about 5 metres and direct sunlight drowns out its infrared signal. Use the outdoor tools instead. Tools ▸ Measure a Surface for a deck or patio — walk it and tap the corners. Tools ▸ Measure a Site for a lawn, garden, or whole property — trace it on satellite imagery.

Scanning fits a wall to the nearest large surface it can see, so a run of cabinets, a wardrobe, or a closed curtain becomes the wall and the room comes out short. The corner behind them often never closes either. Two fixes in the Blueprint Editor: select the wall and use “Wall measured too close” to push it back by the cabinet depth, then use Close Corner. Scanning the strip of wall above the units also helps a lot.

That's a live minimap — a 2D blueprint that draws itself as you scan. It shows which walls have been captured so far, so you can see at a glance what's still missing.

Haptic feedback signals scanning progress. A gentle pulse means a new surface was detected, and a stronger tap means a wall or opening was captured — so you can scan without staring at the screen.

The scanner itself wasn't confident about that surface — nearly always because something is standing in front of the real wall. Pull curtains and blinds clear of the corners and re-scan that wall. Mirrors and large panes of glass confuse depth too.

Open a project from Projects, then tap Edit Blueprint under Edit & Export. Everything is edited after the scan — the lines you see while scanning are a live preview and can't be dragged.

Tap a wall to select it, then tap its dimension label. An input dialog lets you type the exact length, and the plan updates to match.

Select a wall, then press and hold one of its endpoint circles for a moment. Once it activates, drag to reposition the endpoint — the wall length updates in real time.

Tap the eye button in the editor toolbar. It hides every dimension label except the selected wall's, which clears the plan so the endpoints can be grabbed. Tap it again to bring them all back.

Select one of the two walls and tap Close Corner. It extends both walls to the corner they should share and marks them as inferred. It deliberately refuses when the walls meet in the middle of another wall, since that's a T-junction rather than a corner.

Yes. Tap the add-wall button in the toolbar, then tap where the wall starts and again where it ends. This is the fix when something hid a wall completely — a full bank of cabinets or a floor-to-ceiling curtain.

Yes. The editor supports undo and redo for up to 50 steps, so feel free to experiment.

Tap the tag icon in the editor toolbar to open the Room Labels sheet, where you can rename any room.

LiDAR scans are close but approximate — expect small differences from a tape measure. Calibrate your scan for the best accuracy, and always verify critical dimensions on site before ordering materials.

Calibration corrects your scan's scale using a real tape measure. Measure one wall, enter the value, and every dimension in the scan rescales to match — measure up to three walls and BeaverPlot averages them for even better accuracy.

An advisory, never a blocker. It appears when the walls don't close into a complete outline, or when the scanner flagged surfaces it wasn't sure about. Your exports still work — it's there because a re-scan or a quick edit is cheapest while you're still in the room.

Size and surface decide it. Measure a Surface for hard, walkable areas up to about 10 metres across — decks, patios, paths, slabs. Aerial photos are roughly half a metre per pixel, so a small deck is only a few pixels wide and can't be traced accurately. It's also the one to use for anything built since the last aerial photo, or hidden under trees, because the camera sees what's there today. Measure a Site for lawns, gardens, and whole properties — grass isn't something the camera can lock onto, and a large area is far quicker to trace than to walk.

Tools ▸ Measure a Surface. Stand at one corner and tap it, then walk the edge tapping each corner as you go — three corners minimum. Area and perimeter update as the shape closes, and Undo removes the last corner you placed.

The camera needs texture and light to lock on. Wood decking, pavers, flagstone, brick, tile, and gravel all work well. Smooth fresh concrete, wet or reflective surfaces, and dim light are much harder — the banner at the top of the screen tells you when the camera can't get a fix. Grass doesn't work at all: it isn't flat and it moves in the wind. Use Measure a Site for lawns.

The camera hasn't found its bearings yet. Until it does, taps genuinely do nothing — that's the camera, not a broken button. The banner at the top of the screen says what it needs: move the phone around a little, slow down, or point at something with more texture. Once that message clears, your taps will land. If a surface simply won't track, trace it with Measure a Site instead.

Two checks run on a finished surface. If it spans more than about 10 metres, camera tracking has drifted far enough to be worth mentioning, and Measure a Site is the better tool at that size. If your corners differ in height, one of them probably landed on a step, a railing, or a chair rather than the surface itself — undo it and place it again. Both are advice, not errors: you still get the number.

Good enough for quoting and ordering materials, not a survey. It depends heavily on the light and the surface on the day — a well-lit wooden deck is the best case, dim light on plain concrete the worst. If a number really matters, check one side against a tape measure before you order.

Tools ▸ Measure a Site. The map opens on your location — or search an address — then tap around the edge of the area to trace it. Area and perimeter update as you go. Tap Subtract to cut out flower beds, a driveway, a pool, or the house itself.

Good enough for quoting and ordering materials, not a legal survey. It's traced over aerial imagery, so accuracy depends on how carefully you trace and how current the imagery is — pictures can be a season or two old, so check anything built recently.

No. Site measurement uses map imagery, not sensors, so it works on any iPhone — including models that can't run room scanning.

Tools ▸ Saved Sites. Every measurement you save is listed there with its area, ready to re-export or delete. Swipe a row to remove it.

Yes — that's the point of saving one. In the Lawn, Ground Cover, or Deck Stain calculators, tap “Use a saved site” and the area drops straight in, no retyping.

A one-page sheet you can hand a client with a quote. A site measurement shows your traced boundary over the map; a surface measurement shows the outline drawn to scale with each side's length. Both carry the area, the perimeter, and any warnings you saw on screen. Exporting is a Pro feature; measuring is free.

A signed record of extra work — anything a builder, GC, or homeowner asks for that isn't in your original contract or quote. In the trades this is called a T&M (time and materials) ticket or the start of a change order. Without a signature, extra work is your word against theirs; with one, it's billable. Small subcontractors typically fail to collect 10–30% of the extra work they do — the Tickets tab exists to close that gap.

Tickets ▸ +. Snap a couple of photos, dictate or type what was asked for, add labor and material lines, then tap Review & Sign and hand the phone to the person who authorized the work. They sign with a finger on your screen — nothing to install on their side. The ticket locks, and a one-page PDF is generated on your device, ready to share on the spot.

Because that's what makes it evidence. A signed ticket records exactly what the signer approved; if the contents could change afterwards, the signature would prove nothing. Only the billing status advances — mark it Invoiced when you bill it and Paid when the money lands. If something was wrong, delete the ticket and write a new one before signing.

On your device, in your own files: Files ▸ Beaverplot ▸ Tickets, one folder per ticket containing its photos, the signature, and the signed PDF. They're included in your device backup, so they survive a phone upgrade — and they never touch a server.

Yes, if you allow notifications. Three days after a ticket is signed and still not invoiced, BeaverPlot nudges you to bill it; two weeks after invoicing and still unpaid, it nudges you to chase it. The Tickets tab also shows a running Outstanding total of signed and invoiced work that hasn't been paid.

The whole workflow is free — create, photograph, dictate, sign, generate, and share the PDF. Free tickets carry a BeaverPlot watermark; Pro removes it. If you upgrade later, open a ticket and tap Regenerate PDF to get a clean copy — the signature and contents stay exactly as signed.

Four formats: IFC (for Revit and BIM software), DXF (for AutoCAD), PDF floor plan (for sharing and printing), and USDZ (a 3D model you can view in AR). There's also the Listing Floor Plan, a polished PDF designed for property listings.

IFC is a rich BIM format with 3D wall objects and spatial hierarchy — ideal for Revit (File ▸ Open ▸ IFC). DXF is a 2D drawing format with lines and layers — ideal for AutoCAD and simple floor plan editing.

Export USDZ — it's generated instantly on your device, no internet needed. Opening it launches an interactive 3D view where you can also place the model in AR.

Every export is saved on your device in the Files app, under On My iPhone ▸ BeaverPlot ▸ BeaverPlot Exports. They're ordinary files you own — open, copy, or share them with any app anytime. If you ever delete BeaverPlot, copy out anything you want to keep first, since the folder is removed along with the app.

Yes. The Export History screen lists everything you've exported, and you can re-share or delete any file from there.

A Pro export that writes your scan as an Xactimate sketch — walls, doors and windows, and levels — so a restoration estimate can start from measured rooms instead of a blank sheet. Import it in Xactimate via Sketch. It's a beta: the format follows publicly documented Xactimate output, and we'd like to hear how it imports for you. Curved walls are skipped and noted.

A Pro export with one row per room — floor area, perimeter, ceiling height, wall count, doors, windows, longest wall and approximate wall area — in your units, ready for Numbers or Excel. The first line reminds you these are draft measurements from a LiDAR scan.

In the project's Levels section you can mark a storey as Below grade (basement). Gross living area then counts only above-grade floors, with below-grade area listed separately, and Copy GLA disclosure gives you a paste-ready sentence for a listing. It states plainly that the figures come from an iPhone scan and are not an ANSI Z765 measurement — calibrate first and verify before relying on them.

A clean, presentation-ready floor plan PDF made for property listings. It includes wall dimensions, room names with areas, door swings, a scale bar, and one page per story for multi-story scans.

Yes. Enter the property address and a Prepared By name (you or your agency) and they're printed in the plan's title block.

No — it's generated entirely on your device and saved straight to your BeaverPlot Exports folder in Files. Your data stays yours; nothing is uploaded.

Free plans include a BeaverPlot watermark. Upgrade to Pro for clean, watermark-free exports ready to drop into any listing.

Yes. Settings ▸ Profile ▸ Plan branding lets you add a logo and contact line, pick a drawing style (drafting, presentation or blueprint), show room areas and door swings, and Set north for a compass — the scan can't know which way is north, so you tell it. Branding prints on Pro exports; free plans keep the watermark.

A Pro feature that publishes your scan as an interactive 3D dollhouse model at a beaverplot.com link. Anyone can open it in a regular web browser — no app needed — and tap measurement hotspots to see room dimensions.

Anyone who has the link. Tours stay online until you delete them, so only publish spaces you're comfortable sharing.

You can have up to 25 published tours at a time. If you hit the limit, delete an older tour from Manage Tours to free a slot.

Open Manage Tours and delete it. The link stops working right away.

Tours are tied to this installation of BeaverPlot. Published links keep working after a reinstall, but the new installation can't manage or delete them — so delete any tours you no longer want before removing the app.

Published tours stay live for a grace period of about a month after your subscription ends, then they're removed. Resubscribing keeps your active tours online.

From a scan plus photos and notes, BeaverPlot's AI drafts a professional report — a Property Condition report, a real-estate Listing write-up, a Punch/Snag list, or a Damage/Restoration scope. It's a starting draft grounded in your real measurements that you review, edit, and finalize.

You choose. The picker defaults to the type that fits your profile role (set during onboarding or in your profile) — for example an inspector defaults to Property Condition, an agent to Listing — and you can switch anytime.

Treat it as an editable draft, not a final or certified document. LiDAR measurements are approximate and AI can miss or mis-word things, so always review and verify before you use or share it.

Yes — AI Reports are part of the Pro AI plan.

Your photos are sent to generate the report and then discarded on the server — the finished report is handed back to you and saved on your device. Nothing is kept online.

Photos taken during a scan are pinned to the spot on the floor plan where you stood, numbered, and grouped under their room. Photos you add from the library can be tagged to a room with a long-press in the photo tray. Each finding the AI writes carries a small note saying which photo it came from, or “from notes” when it came from what you typed.

On the Report ready screen, tap Publish web report. Give it a name, optionally turn on Protect with a PIN, and you get a beaverplot.com/r/… link anyone can open in a browser — no app or account needed. Links stay up until you remove them from Settings ▸ Shared Reports. The PDF is always yours to keep.

Yes. Open the project's Condition Report, then Compare with an earlier report. Pick the two reports (there's a Move-in / Move-out preset) and BeaverPlot pairs each room — rating, notes and photos side by side — and exports a before/after PDF. Reports are saved on your device for this, so make the first one before tenants move in.

A free, on-device helper that turns the notes you typed into a plain-language first draft for a Condition Report (and a starter list in Quick Inventory). It runs with Apple Intelligence on your phone — nothing is sent anywhere — and it only sees your notes, so it can't judge photos or condition. For findings written from your photos, use a Pro AI report.

Walk around photographing your rooms and the AI lists what it sees into an editable inventory — item, brand, room, and notes — handy for insurance, moving, warranties, or your own records.

From the Dashboard tap Quick Inventory, add photos (and optionally type or dictate context like “garage: tools and two bikes”), then tap Build. Review the list, edit or add items, and Save.

They're saved on your device under My Inventories. Open any one to edit it, export it as a PDF to share or print, or link it to a scanned project.

Yes — Quick Inventory is part of the Pro AI plan. You can create up to 50 inventories per month (counted separately from AI Reports).

No. The AI never assigns a dollar value — it just describes what's in the photo. You can add your own values in each item's details. It's your record, not an appraisal.

Area & Volume, Concrete (slabs and round post footings), Deck Frame (joists, blocking, decking boards), Deck Stain, Lawn (sod, seed, fertiliser), Ground Cover (mulch, topsoil, gravel), Paint, Stud Framing, Staircase, and a Unit Converter. All free, and all work without a scan.

After a scan, Estimate Materials opens the paint, stud framing, area & volume, and concrete calculators pre-filled with your room's real dimensions — so you never re-type measurements.

It solves within the residential limits in IRC R311.7.5 — a maximum 7¾-inch riser and a minimum 10-inch tread — and tells you when the code minimum, rather than the comfort rule, set the tread depth. Local codes vary, so confirm with your inspector before cutting stringers.

Because nominal names don't match real sizes and the gap changes with the material. A 5/4×6 is actually 5½ inches wide and a 2×8 is 7¼. Composite is spaced ³⁄₁₆ inch rather than ⅛ because it moves with temperature, and a wider gap covers more deck per row — so the same board in composite needs slightly fewer rows than in wood.

It's accurate — a second coat goes onto sealed material and stretches roughly 50% further — but it's off by default so estimates err generous. Running short mid-job costs a trip to the store; a little left over doesn't.

Go to Settings ▸ Color Theme. Choose from Classic Blue, Slate, Terracotta, or Forest — the theme applies immediately across the entire app.

Go to Settings and change Appearance in the Preferences section. You can also toggle it from the Dashboard.

Pro unlocks IFC, DXF, and PDF exports, publishing shareable 3D tours, clean watermark-free listing floor plans, and site-measurement PDFs. Everything else — scanning, editing, calibration, USDZ, site measurement, and every calculator — is free.

Yes, new subscribers get a 7-day free trial. Cancel during the trial and you won't be charged.

Monthly and yearly plans. You can cancel anytime, and Pro stays active until the end of the period you've paid for.

Go to Settings and tap Restore Purchases. This re-syncs your subscription, which is also how you bring Pro to a new device.

Your scans live on your device. USDZ models and listing floor plans are generated entirely on-device; IFC, DXF, and PDF exports are converted briefly on our server and then handed straight back to you.

Barely at all. Export files are deleted from the server as soon as your download completes, and the scan data staged for conversion expires automatically within an hour.

Only 3D tours you choose to publish — and you can delete those anytime from Manage Tours.

Only the points you tapped and the area they work out to. Map imagery is never saved — it's shown live and, for a PDF, fetched fresh at the moment you export.

Scanning needs a LiDAR device (iPhone 12 Pro or newer Pro model, or iPad Pro 2020+) on iOS 26 or later. Also check that BeaverPlot has camera access in iOS Settings ▸ Privacy & Security ▸ Camera. The calculators and site measurement work regardless.

That's fragmentation, and it usually means one large or open space was captured as a single room. Scan room by room using Next Room. Projections, alcoves, and anything blocking a wall all make it worse, because the scanner can't tell where one flat surface ends and the next begins.

Check your internet connection and tap Retry — BeaverPlot also tries an automatic backup conversion route on its own. Large multi-room scans can simply take a little longer, so give it a moment.

That's normal for a quick scan — LiDAR measurements are approximate. Open Calibration, measure one to three walls with a tape measure, and the whole plan rescales to match reality.

Tap the arrow in the search bar to centre on your location, or type the address. If location is off, BeaverPlot says so and you can search instead — measuring works either way.