3D Site Surveys

• Move the model Hold the left mouse button and drag. The ground follows your cursor.
• Rotate Hold the right mouse button and drag to swing the view around and change the viewing angle.
• Zoom Scroll the mouse wheel, or use two fingers on a trackpad.
• Recenter Double-click any point to bring it to the centre of the view. Handy if you get lost.

You can measure real distances, areas and heights directly on the survey. Nothing you do is saved to the file, so feel free to experiment.

• 1. Open the tools Click the ☰ button in the top-left to open the sidebar, then find the Tools section.
• 2. Pick a tool Choose what you want to measure — distance between points, an area, a height difference, or an angle.
• 3. Place points Left-click on the model to place each point. Keep clicking to add more points along a line or around an area.
• 4. Finish Right-click to finish the measurement. This step is easy to miss. Until you right-click, the measurement stays attached to your cursor and keeps adding points.
• 5. Read it The value appears on the measurement itself, and every measurement is listed in the sidebar under the Scene tab, where you can also remove ones you no longer want.

A mouse is required. Measuring depends on separate left and right clicks, so it isn't available on phones or tablets.

• Measurements within the model are reliable. Distances, areas and heights measured between two points on the survey can be trusted.
• Absolute position may be off by 1–3 metres. These surveys were flown without RTK positioning or ground control points, so the model as a whole may sit slightly away from its true position on the earth. This does not affect measurements taken inside the model.
• Only what the drone can see is captured. Under tree canopy the surface you see is the treetops, not the ground beneath them.

The viewer shows one product of a survey. Each one also produces standard geospatial files, available on request:

• Orthomosaic (GeoTIFF). A georeferenced aerial image of the property — flat, to scale, and ready to drop straight into GIS software.
• Digital elevation model. Surface heights across the site as a raster grid, for slope, drainage and contour work.
• Point cloud (LAZ). The full survey measurements in the standard compressed format, for use in other 3D or GIS tools.
• Processing report. Flight details, image count and quality figures for the survey run.

Useful if you or a consultant work in QGIS, ArcGIS or similar — just ask and we'll send them over.

• A computer is recommended. The surveys are large 3D models, and the measurement tools need a mouse.
• WebGL must be available. Current versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Edge all support it. If a survey page loads but the model never appears, this is the usual cause — try another browser, or update the one you have.
• Phones and tablets are view-only. You can look around a survey with one finger to rotate and two to zoom, but you cannot measure.