A Trimble X9 laser scanner on the stage of a performing arts venue, facing the empty auditorium and its tiered balconies.

Reality capture · Coachella Valley, working nationwide

Existing conditions, made usable

Most buildings no longer match their drawings.

We document buildings, sites and venues with terrestrial and aerial LiDAR, photogrammetry and 360 capture — then turn the result into the drawings and models your project team actually works from.

Architecture/ Construction/ Entertainment venues/ Event production/ Hospitality/ Development/ Landscape design
Textured aerial 3D model of a performing arts centre and its grounds — building, parking, roads and palm-lined lawns captured as one dataset.

What we do

We measure what is actually there

Design decisions get made against drawings that are decades old, incomplete, or were never right. We replace the guesswork with a measured record of the building and the site as they stand today.

Every deliverable comes out of the same captured dataset — floor plans, reflected ceiling plans, elevations, sections, site plans, point clouds and 3D models. Capture once, and the information carries through due diligence, design, construction and the next renovation.

Capability

Built to handle the difficult ones

Occupied venues, historic buildings, and sites with no usable drawings at all. The instruments are ours, the processing is ours, and the drawings are produced in-house.

Billions Points in a single project capture Whole-venue datasets — building interior and surrounding site in one record — cleaned, merged and processed in-house.
4 Capture platforms owned and operated Terrestrial LiDAR, aerial LiDAR, photogrammetry and RTK positioning — selected per project, not rented per job.
150m Terrestrial scanner range Trimble X9 Premium, with automatic calibration, self-levelling and in-field registration.
7 Delivery formats DWG, PDF, Revit, SketchUp, Vectorworks, Rhino and registered point cloud. Need another? Ask.

Services

Three ways to engage us

Scoped around the deliverable you need rather than a fixed package. Square footage informs the proposal; complexity, outputs, access, travel and turnaround determine the fee.

Intensity-coloured LiDAR point cloud of a theatre auditorium seen from the stage — seating tiers, stacked balconies, a structural column and doorways. 01 — Capture

Reality capture

A complete spatial record for teams that need verified source data without drawing production.

  • Registered terrestrial point cloud
  • 360 virtual tour and tagged site photography
  • Roof, facade and overhead capture
  • Coordinated project data archive
  • Hosted viewer links for the project team

For owners, architects, engineers, contractors and VDC teams working the data themselves.

Planimetric floor plan of a theatre auditorium — curved seating rows, vomitory stairs, stage edge and surrounding circulation drawn in CAD from scan data. 02 — Documentation

Architectural documentation

LiDAR-based existing conditions translated into coordinated CAD or Revit drawings.

  • Dimensioned floor plans
  • Reflected ceiling and roof plans
  • Interior and exterior elevations, sections
  • Planimetric site plans
  • DWG, PDF, SketchUp, Vectorworks, Rhino, Revit

Licensed-architect support available. MEP design not included.

3D CAD model of a theatre auditorium interior produced from scan data — seating tiers, stacked balconies and proscenium. 03 — Complete

Complete existing conditions

Capture and architect-led drawing production delivered as one coordinated package.

  • Terrestrial and aerial capture in one scope
  • Building and site documented together
  • Topographic data, contours and grade context
  • Optional Revit or SketchUp model
  • One usable package for the whole project team

For complex renovations and multi-discipline teams needing both the source data and the drawings.

From capture to drawing

The point cloud, and what comes out of it

The point cloud is the measured record. The model is what the project team builds from. Both come from the same site visit.

Registered point cloud of a curved-walled event space — angled roof panels, irregular window openings, a hung lighting truss and a red carpeted floor.
Captured — registered point cloud
3D model of the same event space from the same viewpoint, with the curved wall panels, window openings, lighting truss and entrance modelled.
Delivered — 3D CAD model
Intensity-coloured point cloud of an arena bowl and roof structure.
Captured — arena bowl and roof structure
3D CAD model of the same arena showing the roof structure, seating bowl and scoreboard.
Delivered — 3D CAD model

How you receive it

Your project in one link, delivered through our customer portal

Reality capture usually arrives as a hard drive or a download link nobody can open. Every DSM project is delivered on its own page instead — the data to look at, and the files to download, in the same place.

Opens in a browser

The point cloud opens right in the page. No software to install, no plugin, no account, no viewer subscription that expires — and it works on a phone. Send the link to the whole project team, including the people who would never install ReCap.

Too big to send — so we don't send it

A scan of a whole venue is enormous. Every surface is recorded as millions of individual measurements, room by room, until the building exists as data.

So we organise it by location and keep it on our server. When you open the page, your browser asks for only the part of the building you are actually looking at, in only as much detail as you could see from where you are standing. Move, and the next piece arrives.

It works the way a map does on your phone. You are never downloading the world — only the few streets in front of you.

What you move through in the browser is a preview. The full-resolution data stays the deliverable, and it downloads from the same page.

The files are right there

Under the preview sits the actual deliverable list — ReCap, DWG, PDF, orthophotos, E57 — as direct downloads with no sign-in wall. 3D models and 360 tours share the same page, on tabs beside the point cloud.

Live demo

Cow Palace

The real client page for the Cow Palace — the 1941 arena in Daly City — opening the way it does for their project team. Building and campus held as one record, a 3D model and a 360 virtual tour on the tabs beside it, and six files underneath including a 25 GB point cloud and a 3.5 GB orthophoto. Nothing to install.

Open the live project ↗

Drag to orbit · scroll to zoom · W A S D to walk through it

Who we work with

Different teams, different decisions

Architects & Designers

Most renovations start with drawings that are decades old, if they exist at all. You get the building as it actually stands today — real ceiling heights, real wall positions, real floor levels — so the design fits the first time.

Contractors & VDC

Scan before the walls close up and you have a record of every pipe, duct and conduit exactly where it ended up. Point clouds come in the standard formats — E57, RCP, LAS, PTS — so they drop straight into Revit and whatever else your team runs.

Venue & Production Teams

Stages, seating, catwalks, rigging points and load-in paths measured once. Know whether the set fits through the door and where lights and speakers can hang before the trucks arrive.

Owners & Facilities

Every contractor who bids work on your building measures it again first. Give them all one verified set of drawings and the bids come back faster, cleaner, and comparable to each other.

Capture platform

No single tool solves everything

Owned, operated and validated in the field. Each platform is selected around the project, the access conditions and the deliverable — not around what happens to be in the vehicle.

  • A DJI Matrice 350 RTK carrying an L2 LiDAR payload, hovering in front of a desert venue while a pilot in a high-visibility vest flies it from the ground.
  • Two Drone Scope Mapping staff in high-visibility vests on the field of an empty stadium, standing either side of a tripod-mounted laser scanner.
  • A Drone Scope Mapping operator beside a tripod-mounted laser scanner on the apron of an outdoor amphitheatre, the stage shell behind him.
  • Two Drone Scope Mapping staff holding a GNSS rover pole in the parking lot of the Cow Palace arena, with the building and its signage behind them.
  • A Drone Scope Mapping equipment table — a multirotor aircraft, a laser scanner, GNSS tripods and screens showing captured data.

Ground control is part of the job

Aerial and terrestrial data only agree with each other if something ties them together. We set and check control on site so the interior scan, the facade and the surrounding ground land in one consistent project reference — rather than three datasets that nearly line up.

That reference is a local datum we set and label. It is not tied to a certified county datum, and it is not a substitute for one.

Terrestrial LiDAR

Trimble X9 Premium

150 m configuration with high-speed capture, automatic calibration, self-levelling and in-field registration. Interiors, facades, vertical circulation, roof structures.

Aerial photogrammetry

DJI Matrice 4E

Compact RTK mapping aircraft with a 20 MP 4/3 camera, mechanical shutter and 0.5-second image intervals. Roofs, facades, parcels, campuses and site context.

Aerial LiDAR

DJI Matrice 350 RTK + L2

Long-endurance enterprise aircraft carrying multi-return LiDAR, RGB imaging and a precision IMU. Terrain, grade changes, broad properties, difficult access.

RTK positioning

Emlid Reach RS2 + RS3

Multi-band GNSS base and rover receivers for ground control and site checks; the RS3 adds tilt compensation for points you cannot stand a pole on.

What our deliverables are — and are not

Our drawings and data are existing-condition documentation, produced for planning, design reference and contractor coordination. Site plans are planimetric documents derived from captured data and are referenced to a local datum that we set and label, not to a certified county datum.

They are not certified surveys and may not be used for legal descriptions, boundary determination, easements or construction staking. Drone Scope Mapping is not a licensed land surveyor or architect. All dimensions and elevations are approximate; field verification is required prior to construction.

Boundary surveying, construction staking, engineering certification, MEP, structural and civil engineering, and professional-stamp services are excluded unless separately provided under an appropriate written scope by qualified professionals.

Questions

Before you ask us

What does a project cost?

Every project is different. Square footage informs the proposal; building complexity, the deliverables you need, access and travel, and turnaround determine the fee. After a short conversation we send a written scope and a fixed price — no hourly surprises.

Are you qualified to fly commercially?

Yes. All flights are performed by FAA Part 107–certified remote pilots, under current airspace authorisations and safety regulations. Airspace approval is handled as part of project planning, before mobilisation.

Are you licensed land surveyors?

No, and we do not present our work as survey products. We are a reality-capture and existing-conditions documentation company. We do not determine property boundaries, prepare legal descriptions, certify elevations to a county datum, or provide construction staking. Where a project needs certified or stamped survey products, those are engaged separately from qualified licensed professionals.

What do we actually receive?

Depending on scope: a registered point cloud, a 360 virtual tour, tagged site photography, and drawings or models in DWG, PDF, Revit, SketchUp, Vectorworks or Rhino. Large datasets are delivered through a hosted viewer link your whole project team can open in a browser, with the source files available to download.

Will you travel to our site?

Yes. We are based in the Coachella Valley and work throughout California and nationwide. Travel and mobilisation are quoted up front and appear as their own line in the proposal.

Can you work in an occupied or operating building?

Routinely. Much of our venue and hospitality work happens around live operations, in dark rooms, overnight, or between events. Scanning is passive and quiet, and we schedule around your calendar rather than the other way round.

Start a project

Tell us about the building

Send the address, roughly what you need out of it, and when you need it. We will come back with a written scope and a price — usually within two business days.