FM-grade 3D scans: straight from your phone

Laser-scanning a building used to mean big budgets and specialist crews. That era is ending.

A modern phone's LiDAR sensor can now capture 3D interiors that are genuinely FM-grade — if you know how. The difference between a scan that just looks good and one you can actually run facility management on comes down to method.

So we're publishing a short series — a practical guide to capturing a scan of your building quickly and easily:

1️⃣ How to scan an FM interior with a phone — workflows and best practices
2️⃣ How much 3D scan do you actually need? — a tiered approach, so you stop over-capturing detail FM will never use
3️⃣ Why LiDAR matters for FM-grade phone scans — where the sensor earns its keep, and where it doesn't

At ioLabs we build ioFM — browser-based FM software that's fast and affordable. Now the same principle applies to creating the source data: scan a property with your phone, and ioFM turns it into a digital twin of the building you manage — in weeks, not months. A phone scan and ioFM — instead of expensive, drawn-out BIM modeling.

Preview: across the series we'll introduce solutions from @MadVoxel, @Polycam and @Scaniverse. First article drops next week. Stay tuned — and keep an eye on our blog 👉 https://iolabs.ch/de/blog/