The Canvas App Is it the Easy Button for As-Builts? - Designers Show #79

All right here we are, Dan Baumann here with Chief Experts Academy on live and I’m on with Robin and John.Today we have a special guest, his name is Greg Barto with Canvas.io  - part of the Occipital.

For those of you on the call we're going to talk Canvas today so if you've used the app we'd love your feedback. Feel free to add your questions into the chat and we'll do our best to answer them.

Part of the reason we're doing this is because about a year and a half ago we had Canvas on as a guest - it went really well, and we had some really good information. I did a scan of my house and sent it in, and they sent it back and I was pretty impressed with the results that I got back at that time. Well in the last year and a half a few things have changed with Canvas, not a ton but you know you guys have gotten better. You've gotten quicker, you've gotten more experience, the app has got a little better and it's working well.  

So, I thought okay, let's go. Let me go out.  I am excited. I talked to Greg here a couple weeks ago and we started chatting about maybe I could even do some more things to help your company promote Canvas because I’m convinced it works, and I think it works well and I was going to save that till the end.  But I thought I’d bring that up right away so it’s not 100. It's not going to be perfect for every job. It's not going to be perfect for every situation. It's going to have varying levels of accuracy depending on what you do as a user. Okay so we'll talk about some of those things here today.  So we're going to cover a whole bunch of things and I’m going to share with you a project that I measured on site with Chief Architect and we're going to compare that to the Chief  to the Canvas scan. So, I think you'll find it very interesting.  But before we get into that I do want to do a little commercial here. And let’s share my screen real quick. I’m going to share the screen and Robin, we're getting ready to do some classes.

Yes I’m excited to do these with you.  We have a lot of fun doing these classes together. So we're going to do a course intro to Chief Architect for Interior designers and that'll be fun.  You'll be leading the charge on that because that's what you do. You're an interior designer, well more kitchens and bath.  But you've done the whole house right exactly.

The focus is really good for your new employees, people who are brand new to Chief and this is where we can get started.  Understanding all the basics. So, it's really starting really at the basics.  So, for most of you who are on this call you already have a really good understanding of Chief but it's really for your new employees or people who want to learn it.  But in the videos you’re not able to really ask questions and really understand it step by step by step. That's what this class is for.  We've got a lot of things happening so it's going to be a fun class.  Then the other class I’m really excited about because this would be really beneficial for me because I’ve always been horrible at lighting.  My idea of lighting a house is to go to cheap.  Pop a light fixture in the middle room and move to the next room so not really good for my clients as far as lighting goes. Because there's so much that goes into lighting and this has been a topic that you've been passionate about for a long time.

Lighting really makes or  break your project so it's really detailing the lighting and really understanding what's happening in the world of lighting. Really understanding to understanding how to read the photometric chart. How to really how to talk, use the right words to discuss lighting so we're really dealing with foot candles and delivered foot candles and lens output.

And really determining the right type of lighting for each room and then showing some really great tricks on how to do your lighting plans because it's so easy and cheap.

It's so easy but we're really going to get into the math of lighting so really understanding the details of it. It’s not necessarily a big Chief class.  It's mostly a theory class although the last day will be - I’ll let Dan talk about it.

Well, we'll probably talk about this throughout the course but we'll focus heavily on the last  session - on how to light your plan properly with Chief Architect to get really good renderings so I’ve been working with Renee on that and he'll be involved on that too. So we're pretty excited about that. That's going to be interesting.  Chief's rendering is getting really really good so I’m pretty excited about that.

I’m saying I’m excited a lot today probably because it's nice and sunny outside and  it's going to be fun class.

If you look at the description that we have when you hit the learn more button  one thing I didn't put on there is this - We are going to be doing some extra zoom calls too so we'll probably do a couple of zoom calls. We'll just do some real-world chat on and you'll have a chance to ask questions and things like that too. So that'll be a lot of going on.

Check them out.  Let us know if you have any questions and we look forward to having our classes .

So let's get back into Canvas. This is Greg Barto. I love your picture, Greg, where were you when you took this picture?

I was in Costa Rica about two weeks ago.

I can see why you sent that one to me.  It's like yeah okay you show off and that's when Renee was - in costa Rica too.

I think so Renee’s usually on with us but he had some things come up in it so we couldn't be here but you've been involved in this a long time.  You spent the last 12 years in technology and then 5 years with Canvas.  Tell me a little bit about what you did before Canvas.

I actually started my career in entertainment living in Los Angeles. I worked for producers, talent agents, I did that for about six years and then I moved up to San Francisco back in 2011. 

In  2011 I got a job for a company called TechCrunch, Tech News blog ,really focused on startups and I had a I really grew to love young companies, young technology companies.  And so, there I got to meet a lot of founders.  I got to see a lot of really cool tech and I really just kind of fell in love with the process of helping these younger companies.  I went to another company for about three years, was called Famous.  It was  kind of a higher tech company where we're focused on what's called a JavaScript framework. It's if you know how to code and everything, it was a something to assist you and be able to build things for the web that were previously not possible.  And I spent three years there before coming to  Occipital in 2017, where Canvas had just gotten started. 

We were really just getting it off the ground. They needed some extra help with some larger enterprise opportunities.  I was really just a product manager and the co-founders focused on this product at the time and  they knew that they had something and whenever I saw the tech and I saw what they were doing at the time, I thought it was really cool. Like I just remember the very first time I thought I was like ‘this is really interesting.’ I had no experience in renovation.

I gotta  agree with you on that one. I thought it was interesting too but the thing that turned me off about it was that you had to get this device that you put on your thing called the structure sensor. That's right, pre-lidar. The lidar technology and it's like I don't want to dig around with any more hardware.  It was not a great experience. You had to order the hardware. You had to assemble the hardware. You had to attach it to the iPad.  You had to calibrate it, and then you had to learn how to scan appropriately.  And back then you could only scan room by room once Apple decided to add lidar to IOS devices that was transparent, that was transformative for our business.

So lidar exists now on the Pro devices that Apple has released in the last two years so, your iPhone 12 pro, iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max and then the iPad Pros. 

I got an iPad. 

That's right.  And so on the back where the camera setup is in the bottom left side there's a little circle, the darker circle, the black circle, that little bitty one right there - right in the middle there -  and so essentially, the best way I can explain it is millions of lasers are being shot out from that point.  And we are able to measure how long it takes that laser to shoot out bounce off a surface and come back.  And so we timed that and because we know that time, we know that distance within relative accuracy.  And so what's happening is we're shooting and hitting millions of points across a room.  And we're creating what's called a point cloud.  And then once we have the point cloud, we connect all the dots and fill in the gaps with color and that creates a mesh.  That's what we call the colorize scan in the app.  Essentially you capture the space, and you have a digital representation of that space almost immediately, but it's really just millions of points.

 

 

GLADYS - START HERE -

Source: https://youtu.be/VoA5oYQ5Sac?t=620

 

So let me show my screen here and I’ll show people what you're talking about.

So when we look at this particular scan that doesn't show up quite as well in the video but , if you you can see...

I don't know if you can see that through the wall you see kind of all that now you probably it shows up so well on my screen but not so well on the other screen but it's lots of points everywhere so the points are just floating in air and I think that's what you're referring to as a point cloud (yeah) this is probably not showing it quite as good as what it really is in this view at the top are you able to see where it says colorized?

Yeah

 

If you click that, this is actually the colorized scan this is the original scan and this is the pure geometry with color laid over excuse me I don't mean to make you dizzy but it takes a little practice to get good with your mouse on this kind of stuff

A lot of people use this as a virtual revisit so you're capturing the space you have this available almost immediately on your device and it's just a way to to say like okay I want to know where was the kitchen in relation to the window or what what color was the couch. Depending on what your use case is and the way this kind of takes place.

 I’ve taken a whole bunch of pictures.

Exactly, exactly and outside of pictures this gives you context into where everything is in relation to each other.

Yeah. 

Also from here you were able to pull measurements, the measurements probably won't be as accurate as what you get in our CAD model because we do some additional stuff during the processing of data but you can click two different points here using the measure tool at the top right  and you can you can understand about how tall a door is or how wide a wall is from wall to wall. It gives you a a pretty good measure

so we put three and three quarter 

Oops I forgot to hit a button but I like how that see how it turns that pad on the end of that line

yeah we kind of Know what you're trying to do sometimes and so we'll just say hey! we think this is what what the measurement you're Trying to pull.

Yeah, now how do I get it to stay

I’m still learning this myself guys so bear with me

Then I could add another point you can you can keep those measurements

Too how did I do that before where I can what key do I hit to save the save that Dimension 

it should it should just stay

oh until you until you delete it 

I’m doing something wrong so but let's Not dwell on that right now sure won't be the first time i've done something wrong all right cool so

So that's your lidar technology is making this happen mathematically correct

Correct okay so it's not just it's really not just a bunch of pictures but there's math involved  we're going to

Have some people talking about mataport, mataport is technology that kind of does the same

That does the same thing right yeah very similar technologies kind of different use cases yeah

I’ll tell people right now the reason that this excites me so much versus metaport I think matterport does a nicer Scan

I’m not going to we're not going to argue about that Greg it just does 

But you won't get a Chief Architect's plan back

So that's what's so exciting about what you guys are doing is you're working with Chief Architect you're training your People you got your ai your artificial intelligence doing some things and then you've got your people cleaning it up And adding other detail and all I do is I get a plan back which i’ll show everybody in just a second sure I got back on this particular job

Yeah 

so so what would you add to this conversation that we've been having so Far

yeah I would say you know with with matterpart they're really good at taking that scan, you know it takes it takes a Little bit longer  and they capture that space really well and that's great for things like a virtual tour for real Estate agents if they want to show off a house to someone without them having to go to the space.

Our scan you wouldn't really want to show this to a client this is really for your own reference and our main value if

If matterport is for real estate we're really for the remodelers we're for the interior designers the Architects people That want to take a space put it into a 3d software manipulate the space and change it  matt with mad report you Know they give you that beautiful scan but it's really for marketing purposes for you to be able to share with with a Customer

 yeah exactly 

So yeah i've tried both this in metaport so again they work a little differently this so so let me let's jp into this and

Let me tell people I’m going to tell people my experience here okay so i've only used Canvas a few times

On a few projects this project is one that I went with the client that I’m working with I measured

The job with Chief Architect on site okay so I have the exact within one inch

I have a one inch tolerance when I do that it took me about nine hours to measure this house okay

 Give or take a few minutes so when you measure on site it takes time you just have to be prepared for that

But I got a plan how long did it take you to do the scan Dan okay so this when I went in and I

Did the scan now let me just talk about this for a minute because I didn't do the whole house okay

I only did this part of the house right here for a Canvas

Right I decided I’m just I’m not going to focus I’m just going to do part of it just so we can talk about it here in the

Show okay so that's what I did and

That took me about 20 minutes to scan that space okay it would have taken me you know

Four or five hours four hours to measure the space because of all the cabinets and everything in there

I didn't break that down when I measured the house so I can't tell you exactly what I did so it's  and again we're I’m doing the

Whole house here so that's this and just to clarify when you say

Four hours you're you're drawing it on site too you're not yeah taking measurements and then coming back to

Your office you know you're set up with my laptop on site drawing it as I measured so

The way I do my on-site measures is i’ll i’ll take on and make sketches like 

Like this while I’m measuring okay so i’ll go into room i’ll just measure a whole bunch of things

Then i’ll come back to my laptop and my on my instand  that I use to

Put my laptop on and i’ll draw those things up and then i’ll go measure up a bunch of stuff in the next phase

Now I would never if I had to go back to office and use this type of information

- not going to happen  I think we got a bunch of beeping going on you can mute yourself by the way sorry about so

Yeah so so so go ahead yeah there you go Robin I muted you too so you cannot meet yourself whenever you want  so this

Just saves me time from going back and forth all the time gathering dimensions you know and with the you know the new

Laser meters you can store you know four five six seven you know however many nbers you want if you can remember what they are

And you just kind of back traced on that too so that works pretty well I don't use the bluetooth it just i've never

Found a reason to use that but again i've never tried it so maybe there's a reason

 So that's how I did this space okay and I do a lot of houses like this

They're looking at doing a pretty major remodel additions all sorts of other stuff going on here so

Would I have used Canvas for this particular job probably not 

Because it's a whole house outside roof everything 

Canvas doesn't do exteriors or do they we do do exteriors  it's in an open

Beta right now previously we did not  but with the lidar you can scan the exterior  there are some limitations

To the distance so if it's a three-story house  you're only going to be able to reach the top of the second story about

20 feet and we can get some of the roof data but

It's   that's probably the hardest part because

We can get where the roof begins and we can often get the angles of the roof and we can infer a lot about that like where

They would meet but  but we're not capturing the detail of the roof

That said if you can give us that information we can build it for you so if you tell us how the roof is if you

Give us the dimensions of the roof and everything we can actually include it just based off the dimensions

Okay cool so I I have a question kelsey's actually asking the same question that I wanted that I was going

To ask so I got an email today from a friend of mine who used this Canvas and said that they sent their

Drawings in and the dimensions were off by an inch and a half and the response they got back from

Canvas was that's within our tolerances and I said but I think if you send in some basic dimensions

That then you can fix essentially fix the drawing  what

Type of dimensions would we if first of all is that true and secondly what type of dimensions would you want like just

Basic overall with width and depth and height and that would then help you to 

Kind of fix the drawing to make sure that it's closer that's right yeah so you can submit 

Reference measurements  what the way people do this is they'll take the scan they'll submit it as soon

As you submit it you get an order id and if you take that order id and you email support Canvas.io with a set of

Measurements we will include those in the model the best measurements to give us  overall dimensions are going to

Make the overall model more accurate if there are critical dimensions if

You're if you're measuring a kitchen and you need something to be that eighth of an inch guaranteed if you send us that

Measurement we're going to override something so if we come in an inch off of what you give us we're going to use

Your measurement in in that model instead of what we  our software is

Pulled from that  so yeah like what you so sending sorry I apologize so sending what's on the scan

What's on this image along with it would be appropriate enough these are just basic

These are just basic overall dimension this is what I sent in with the scan

Okay I didn't send in my drawing I sent this in with some dimensions that you know I knew were right

And  i’ll show you the results of that in just a second here so yeah a one inch tolerance inch and half tons depends on

The room depends on what it is  and then again I have one inch tolerance on my ass built so I think

Done correctly with a good scan and good information like this I think you're going to come back with a fairly

Accurate plan now that's that's the one point to really highlight is you know the the you're

Going to get the best accuracy if you train yourself a little bit and we have the videos on our website   if you have

Any questions before reach out we'll give you a free code we'll do a scan review we'll do a lot to make sure

You're scanning correctly so you can get the most accurate result exactly so

Go ahead okay well doug doug walter's asking what's the tolerance  for instance his bosch laser measure  says

Eighth of an inch in a hund in 100 feet what is your tolerance if you send in dimensions how close are your dimension

You know what is your difference so we're generally within 99 or so we're within one percent  so on

A 100 inch wall if it was off by an inch that's possible 

  That that wouldn't surprise us  if you gave us we're measuring 100 inch

Wall and it came in at 95 inches generally something went wrong whether that's  something on  in the scan

There can be weird lighting issues  something something unexpected happened

In that process and and we can generally tell that on our end and we'll reach out to you to

Let you know like hey we think that this isn't correct  and and we'll we'll confirm so let's say let's say you had

Something you're doing a scan and you go and look at your preliminary scan that's available right away

And you realize you missed a spot do you just go back and just scan that part and you guys bring it all together

Yeah pretty much  so you can take multiple scans of the house and you can upload it all to us you can even scan

The same room two or three times if you want and whenever it all gets uploaded your  when it all gets uploaded your

Estimate might be a little bit different because we're automatically reading the square footage of everything you're

Submitting but whenever we actually process it you're only going to get processed for the square footage of that space

And so we will take multiple scans it could be two scans it could be 15 scans

And we'll combine them all into a global model of whatever it is you sent us and

 So you know if you if you're working on a two-story home we always suggest scanning each floor independently and

Then the staircase in and of itself and then we're able to attach everything  together to create that one global model

That's cool so part of that again there's some learning to do and how you do your scanning part of it it's going to be

Having doors open how the things come together that way so that you can recognize where something ends and

Something starts that's right exactly and and I think that's a given on how that works so I think again with each

Project again the lighting the you know if you're in a tight room where you can't really get the

Distance that might not be the best solution here but i'd say probably in

You know six seven eight out of ten situations this might be a really good solution to measure a project

So let's  the worst you know the doug says does it work best to  keep the

Iphone at the same elevations  and i’ll just chime in and say that you know when you're

When you're scanning the space and you when you watch the videos you're going to be you know you're going to be going up and

Down it's kind of like you're painting the wall that's how you describe it  you know you're white washing it so you

Kind of and you'll see in the scan how it's what you're what you're scanning

So I think it what I did on mine I I went too fast

I think that's why mine's a little bit rougher than I thought it would have been and I didn't bother to go back over

And do it again I thought I’m just going to do it once and send it and see what happens so  I probably should have slowed down a

Little bit when I was taking my skin but it was super easy it just nothing to it

And I kind of went you know when when I was doing this scan I I

Started here  where did I start I started right in this corner and I went around

The the building and I kind of pre-planned you know how I was doing this and I

Don't know if this was the right thing to do or not I just thought made sense to me to do it kind of like that and you

Know so I just kind of kept going around doing the whole thing

And then I got to see what did I do here I got to know I

Went like this I don't remember anymore and then I think I might have come back and I ended

Up this about the same spot I started  where did I start here actually I

Started there and I went this way and I did that kind of

Little puzzle what you were saying Greg you could you wouldn't necessarily have to do that you could do that whole space and three or four scans and you guys

Would put it together you could break it up if you want it's definitely a personal preference the one thing we do

Say is you don't want to capture like 3 000 square feet in a single scan  that

When you start doing that weird things happen  we usually say about 1500

Square feet  1750 that's generally the maxim you want to put into a single scan in a

Residential space this is 1400 square feet that's what this is what you calculated

When I finished the scan and when I looked to see how much the scan would have cost to convert would

You do what what 15 cents a square foot 15 cents per square foot that's right so so it's a math on this 400 I think

Something like that for the complete scan for the space which again when I compare that to how

Much time I would spend doing it that would be cheaper than someone paying my time

 So so someone commented here that they found it to be kind of expensive on

Certain projects what is expensive mean 

That's a whole other conversation we can have another time about how do you charge for as built and what should the

Fees be how much should be charging a square foot well you know it's going to cost 15 cents a square foot to do this

So make sure that's what you charge your customers at least plus some of your own time so

Now I’m going to stop right now and do my disclaimer

And that is to and the real value I see in doing this

Whole process is that when you're working on  plans for a client and you're coming up with

All your conceptual stuff and you want to come up with your conceptual nbers and all these things that have to go into this

Do the scan get the plan do your conceptuals get the proposal done get it signed off

Go back and verify all your nbers before you start building

Yeah that's key whether you use this or any product gold verified even if I go on a hand

Draw something you know and hand measure it I still want my clients to go and verify it before

They start building it just like I would if I were going to build it myself i'd go back and verify it before I did it

Yeah we we always suggest confirming measurements  just showing up late we're going to make him be solo layout

And he's in costa rica so you know all right we'll forgive him for that

Hi renee thanks for joining us you're muted so you can you have to mute yourself how's it going it's going well

Yeah that's all right on my machine my bad but I wanted to show up for this one cool well I’m glad you could join us so

Get me off the screen oh come on

All right  so it's a business tool like everything

Else in your business someone's you know your client's going to have to have you have you you need plans

On a project someone's going to have to pay to have those plans done this is a nice solution when you've got a lot of things backed

Up you want to get in and out quickly you want to get the plans that you need so you can get your conceptuals going this is a great solution so

Unlike metaport where you can scan the heck out of it but you still have to go back and sit down and draw it and I did

A whole house like that and I tell you I could have done it faster by measuring it on site to my laptop then it took me

To take the scan from mataport and measure every room while I’m doing it

And scan it and put it in and I just you know I didn't verify anything yet so I don't even know if it's accurate so

 I think this is a much better solution and be perfectly honest  if it plus you get the 3d things out

Of it now if you want the really cool walkthrough get the metaport conser version where you do your own phone and

You scan the room and you don't even need an iphone for that so let's not talk about mana port anymore this is the

Way you want to go  and I already we already did some mana

Port sessions so you can go back and listen to those if you want so questions so far anybody

Got some things going on lighting when you're doing the scan talk about the lighting you need to have to get make

The scan more accurate yeah so the one thing you want to avoid is  scanning into direct sunlight so

If there's sun streaming in through a window  when you do that you blow out the cameras and you just kind of get a

Big white space  and that's impossible for us to convert that's one lighting issue then the other one is the opposite

Of that is a pitch black space you need some amount of lighting so we can capture color if you go into a totally

Dark environment we're just going to get a black hole  and so 

This is this is a pretty well-lit space you know you can see at the tops it looks like there's a very there's a lot

Of sunlight in here  so it's a little bit white a little blown out towards the top but this would be totally fine for

Us to convert yeah by the way so through the plan if you're using mataport use your right mouse

Button to move through the plan I’m in Canvas so I mean going through campus yes

Canvas sorry no no it's all good anyway use your right mouse button to

Scroll through the thing but you see what you know it doesn't scan where the glass is there's probably more light

There but that's okay I’m not trying to scan the outside yeah and we can we can see the edges of all the windows here and

That's the most important thing yeah so what  in a dark in a dark situation in a dark

Situation where you need more light would just a led light that you have fixed so it's following

Your camera would that take care of it  it would be better to have a fixed

 Like a like a light stand we have people that will bring a light in with just a light bulb  and flip that on

That's enough for a room you know   and then again because you can capture room by room you'd probably want to do

That if it were just a complete pitch black room but if there's any amount of sunlight or

Any amount of light electricity in there with a light bulb in it that's frankly that'll be enough okay

How long does it take to get your your dimensions back if you were looking how long oh gosh I could speak english sorry

 How long I have not enough coffee yet today how long does it take to get back your cad

Drawing yeah so you know we we always aim for 24 hours

So what we say is 24 to 48  and and if you're submitting a house

That's you know 5 000 square feet that's pretty large it might be an extra day on that it really depends the size of the

House  it depends on how busy our servers are on processing the data

 And Greg why don't I go through my experience so just tell everybody what

Happened with this particular project as I scanned it so I went in again it took me about 20 minutes to

Scan the space that we see here again I hadn't done this much before so maybe I could do it better I don't know Greg

Once you mute because you do have a sweet little tweety bird giving you some background noise there

He's got more birds than I do yes he does louder anyway

And he's in texas  so I did the scan

And then  I had it hooked to my phone  I wasn't using the house wi-fi so and

I have unlimited data so it didn't matter to me and it took 

Maybe a half hour for it to upload to your server by that time I had gotten back home to

My office and then it took so once it's on once it goes into your

Account let me show that real quick  you'll you'll create an account and

You'll log into it and you can have unlimited projects there's no you pay per project now

The scans that you see the scan I was showing those are free

You can have as many of those as you want in your account for free it'll process them it'll do it you only

Pay to get the cad files that's that correct Greg

Okay that's right yeah you only pay the 15 cents per square foot correct so so if you wanted just to get the scan and

Take some of your own measurements off of it you could do that  so that's something to keep in mind so

You won't get this for free but you will get this the colorize thing for free so this is a

Great way to capture the information on your project and you've got it handy and you can look at anytime you

Want it's always in your account so that's pretty cool I really like that and  then

Let me get back out of here well here's what it looks like when you're scanning so when you're scanning

You see this it's kind of like it's foaming it's puts phones on top of the wall which is really interesting so you

Can always see when you've scanned something all right so you can see where the glass

Is missing so you know it's not picking up that glass so it's kind of cool how that works

And so that's how you can tell what you've scanned and what you haven't scanned now there's techniques involved here and

Again you have training some training videos on that and we'll talk more about that in the future too about how to get

Better scans and I’m sure your technology is you guys aren't sitting still waiting for you

Know everybody use the same technology all the time I’m sure you're busy creating better  technology that will

Improve as time goes on that's just what technology is all about I have a few questions at some point whenever you're

Done yeah let me let me just finish this and then renee you can jp right in  so

 Then what I did is  when you're in your account let me get

Back to my account and i’ll get back to my account  oops

That don't make me log back in  let me just go back this way

Oh here it is it opened in a new window then I just would then you would just go

Here to your account and you would click you'll have an option to get a cad file

You can say what cad file option what what format you want of course I chose Chief Architect that took about

A day and a half to get back you know in the meantime I took my the drawing that I was showing you the

Sketch where I had put some dimensions on it so that you guys would have a little bit more better information to go off you

Know to verify and I emailed that to you guys so you got that and you've worked off of this

And so there we go so all in all  I think I measured on wednesday by friday morning I believe I

Was looking at the actual cad model in fact I know I was yeah it was last

Friday so  but that's about how long it took now I don't know

You know how many people you have helping you how you can scale this but if you're able to keep it in that time frame that's pretty good it really I

Think that can work for people yeah  the next thing 

That i’ll show you right now is what I got back from Canvas so you're going to get a whole bunch of files but of course

The one I was interested in was this one so this is the plan that I got back from

Canvas for that model again I didn't do anything other than scan it and say give

Me a Chief file and then I sent in that drawing that's pretty good I I was 

So it had the electrical that showed that's showing up and the registers and everything the only thing I did here was

Put the word plan from Canvas on this screen that's the only thing i've changed so this is what I got back now I’m going

To show you a couple of things that are not quite right so this is why it's important to pay

Attention but overall this I think this is really good  I could work with this

With my client if we're going to they're they're not remodeling this part of the house but I thought

This i'd use this because it was a nice room  actually I take that back we are going to make some changes in the dining room and

And actually we're going to change this out too  colors weren't what I had in my plan

Or what what what aren't what are there but that's all right I can deal with that we can make some quick changes on

That but overall this is pretty good so let's compare this now to what I measured all right so I’m going to go to

The plan that I did this is the plan I measured on site with my laptop

Took me you know about nine hours to measure the whole house let me get to the right plan here

And get to here so here's here's what I came away with and i've got two floors but again I just

Did the one area and when I go to compare that to

This Canvas scan I inserted the Canvas scan I just made dotted lines out of the Canvas again I

Inserted it at that point right there this is where I inserted the drawing that I received back from

Canvas on top of my drawing and we see that it's coming along pretty good the

Door's off just a touch again that doesn't matter for this process cabinets were not bad

We're off a little bit right here okay again this is where we verify so I would

Like to see that be a little bit closer there we're really pretty good in these this area here

 A little bit off here and just a touch off here so overall i’m

Going to say this is okay I could work with this in doing some conceptual and estimating plans for a client

And it took me you know all of a half hour to get the information I needed so

This is all right I think an important thing to note for everybody out there is that you can send control measurements

To Canvas and their technicians will conform parts correct we we had talked about that and I did send this in with

The with the scan so you are absolutely correct and maybe I I probably sh what I should have done

Was give I should have gave a a a bit of a cross-section of the vaulted ceiling

 I put some notes on here peak at 12 foot 11 although I look at my notes and I go what the hell did I write 112 42

Feet 11. 10. There's my penmanship not coming through

Really good but here's 10 foot two to peak so that was that's pretty good so

When I go compare those to the to the actual plan that I did 

Let's see I want to get to no I’m sorry go back to this one so this was this was off  this is

Again it's not a perfect world so they didn't read my dimensions on that

One probably because they couldn't understand what I was trying to say I should have sent a cross section showing

The height of that peak one thing to note is in the future we are going to be

Adding   ways to include the reference measurements directly into the app

Itself so you won't have to do the sketch yeah  we're going to make it a lot easier to do that you mentioned that

 Although I’m curious you know and someone had a great question why why would it be off that much

You know  I if it's off that much I would have to take a look at the actual raw scan data in that space and I would

Have to look at there are things like scanning technique so I there there's a bunch of other data that we collect if

You want to pull up the raw scan yeah and I look at that and I go oh yeah that's probably why I did not do a very

Good job it may not be captured fully  I didn't when I come on and I can do

This yeah so from this angle it's not bad but from a different angle I was at it was

Pretty crappy so I must have went to again getting used to this

 Oh I’m using my center mouse not my other one but it's kind of choppy up

There yeah is that a different does the geometry of the ceiling change

Throughout the course of this room no it's okay it's smooth here so see where

I i must have goofed here  I don't know what I don't remember what I did there but why did why the

Parts that are out of focus what causes that above the door there

Bub so that smudging there is something that can just happen because we're

Essentially we're capturing color  via imagery or while the ipad is moving so if you

Think about trying to take a picture while you're moving a camera you're going to get some blurring some smudging

And probably moving too fast it's possible that that could be moving too fast

That can shift the geometry a little bit 

I get much better scans from Canvas when I have my device on a gimbal

Because it doesn't have to fight with pitch and roll yes yeah maybe what I was doing was

I was going up and down with my ipad too much instead of just holding it and tilting it up and down does that matter

No that that honestly shouldn't matter you should be able to just kind of move it in a as long as the the movement is

Consistent  and it's if you can look up at the ceiling

 At all like tilt the scan a little bit so you can kind of see the top see here it looks really bad tilt it up

A little bit I’m trying yeah it looks it looks

I need a center mouse wheel that I can pan the screen it looks like you see how it's very white at the top of the ceiling there

Yeah yeah I didn't scan that or the ceiling yeah so because that part wasn't scanned there was no geometry for us to

Know so  it was probably difficult for us to convert that part

So again this is part I think of getting experience scanning exactly we generally say by the third

Scan people are feeling really comfortable but I gotta be honest for a first scan this is this is pretty good

Yeah I mean I got the laptop I got the ipad and I went out and scanned it so yeah that's how

Much time I have into it not bad for my first one other than the one I did last year when you guys sent

Me an ipad to use  because I’m not a windows  apple ride okay so

 Where was I so that was part of my experience doing this whole thing 

I’m I’m okay other than this now the other one came out well

So when I go look at this vault it was right on so I must have had better so this is

Right on so those are the actual measurements I sent in and 

So you must be able to read my writing first of all and I probably had a better scan in here

So so that you could verify it so so there we go so that's a little bit

Of information about let's get better at doing you know I should have checked that scan to make sure it was a little more clear probably should have gone

Back and started over because that was that was early on in my scanning process here 

So again not too bad when I look at the the actual results acceptable

Now if I was going to build a kitchen off of this I wouldn't use those dimensions I wouldn't use anybody's

Dimension that send the cabinet guys out and said go measure the damn room yourself so they got the right dimensions

 Absolutely so but again I like it that you can scan it

You do need you know Greg you want to talk about the equipment that people have to have I think we already

Mentioned it yeah it's it's essentially a pro device from the past two years so starting in

2020 the iphone 12 pro and the pro max iphone 13 pro and pro max and then any

Ipad pro from 2020 newer  those are going to have lidar on them so that's

The big thing you want to check for does does the device have lidar built into it and if it does that's the data that's

How we collect the appropriate data so now i've got the samsung note 2  20 ultra

Which has lidar on it but your software doesn't support that right I think that's the android's a little bit of a

Different beast that's one of the only phones I think that has lidar built into it and samsung doesn't have lighter

There's no android device with lidar anymore yeah it looks like right guys right  you know measure the world

So it's a they don't call it lidar android does have it but they call it something else

Yeah they've got a I think it's a time of flight sensor  it's similar but not as powerful so we wouldn't be able to do

What we do with that type of data or the experience it would frankly would be more like using the

Structure sensor than using lightroom and it's it's just not a good ux and and what we find is with our customers is

They're totally fine going out and buying a dedicated scanning ipad just to be able to use the app well yeah I mean

If you do this a lot it's going to save you a boatload of time plus the ipad's really a nice device it is yep yeah Greg

I’m sure you don't even get access to a roadmap to find out if if the iphone's lidar sensor is going to be improved at

All  you know we don't get anything certain from apple we

I think at best we hear whispers probably nothing more than you can google and find out on the internet 

 Ourselves  what I would count on is lidar not getting more powerful on the

Devices but being more available across devices so that again I don't know that

For sure that is just me sort of speculating the market that they'll bring the lidar and they'll start adding

It into non-pro devices probably not this year maybe next year  but just

Looking at lidar becoming more pervasive across the company's devices

Doug's got a good comment here Chief alone is pretty complex software  are the in the tech are the techs at

Canvas Chief experts I can't imagine at this point I mean they're all going to be

Learning you know the way everybody else learns so I I have an opinion on that one what's

Your thing they do I think they do really well for the cost I mean you know it's it's you take

Someone that's like any one of us who maybe a 20-year experienced person and they're trying to

Understand the scan you know whereas we know what typical sizes of windows and doors we know tough

Architectural situations what the original Architect was intending to do you're hiring freelance technicians or

In-house technicians to do  you know work with these scans across multiple

Platforms Canvas isn't just for Chief Architect right so  I I really do feel like you get what

You pay for here and I think it's really important to do a bunch of control measurements and know that you might need to modify some things to liking

Your needs so again here's the kitchen as I drew it okay with the dimensions I had from outside

I haven't compared this yet to the Canvas scan

  But again when I look at it so but here's the big thing that you need to be

Aware of and go ahead yeah go ahead well here's the benefit of

This is that it's saving you hours of time of being on the project site and

Measuring it right and it's getting you something so even if it is off I mean

The reality is is we're measuring with a lot of stuff in the way you know you're measuring around things so your

Dimensions are always going to be different from the time construction goes in right once they

Tear it apart now the dimensions change a little bit right I mean that's happened to every one of us

So  this at least saves you a lot of time the biggest problem thing that I see

About it is you have to adjust your billables differently because if this is taking you know measuring as much as you

Did it would normally take what three hours to measure you know a decent sized

House three four hours to measure it and then or more right so normally you

Would be billing for that but if you're only taking  if you're only taking an hour to do

The scan and to take some basic dimensions and then you go back out again

And you adjust some of the dimensions because you know you just want to make sure right you're losing some billable time so you

Really have to you're losing billable time you're still going to build a client for the 

For the measure you know for the the the Canvas scan and the Canvas initial

As built but you still have to do modifications so you really do need to go back through

Track track your time and be aware of how much you would normally bill because you don't want to lose that money so you now

Have to make sure that you're billing for that time that you're losing right does that make sense to everybody yeah I

Have a line I don't know I rely on them on my contracts for the conversion for also just

Making sure that it conforms  yeah it's a it's a different contract but it actually pans out similarly

What really works for you know keep in mind I’m a top tier technician I really know this software so

For it to be a benefit to me I need to send out a scan tech I am not going to be on site for this so there is a

Benefit there right if I’m going to be on site i’ll measure myself  but you

Know lower level technicians there might be a great cost benefit here where you're getting a model that is

Produced as well as you may be able to produce it and and you're doing it for a pretty decent fee so yeah

Yeah i'd say everybody give it a shot try it and guess what we've got a deal for

You already know you can use the software for free to get your scans and if you use this little code right

Here when you purchase a cad a Chief Architect file you get a hundred bucks

Off okay so if you're just scanning one room

It's probably going to be free you'll get your Chief plan back and you'll get a chance to check it out and see how it works

So  so what I asse when you order you'll have a place to put in that code and you'll be good to go right very cool

Very cool hey would you mind pinning  mm-2s 

He he uses the 3d as a backup yeah the screen per second I had a client  that decided to scan

With Canvas and also measure on site and they came up and realized they forgot

Something on site and then they paid for the Canvas app and it saved them a trip and it was a trip that was 30 you know

30 minute  hour round trip or something like that yeah and right there it saved their butts absolutely one of the biggest one

One of our largest value propositions that we talk about all the time is that you never miss a measurement and you know when you're driving an hour

Each way to a customer's house that's  it definitely adds up yeah absolutely

Absolutely so give it a shot you guys try it if all you're doing is getting the scans I mean it's a great way to get

All the information you can walk around through the project and it's all that part's free then you can files cad files

Are you paying for I think that's a great deal you guys have come up with a winning proposition there I think  versus how you did it year and a half

Ago where you had all these different charges for different looking different routes

Yeah plans make it plain and simple so it doesn't matter if you do 100 square foot room that's going to cost you what

15 bucks something like that  if you do a thousand square foot room it's going to cost you 150.

So if you oh the scan you can download right and you can save it in your client file you

Can download it and put in your own dropbox file or anything like that correct so the  the the Chief Architect file

Yes you own that and everything there's no subscriptions there's even the raw scan data but that's available in your

Canvas account we do keep that on  okay you can log into your account on Canvas.io and that's where we organize

All your information if you ever want to delete data it's your data to own and do whatever you want

But we do just because the file type is called an obj file and it's a little

Technical it's not something that would work easily so it's just an easy way to view that data

Got it okay again you can have unlimited with that i've brought those obj files

In the Chief yeah it's kind of fun to play with honestly yeah and it's another backup in case the technician missed

Something or didn't do it the way you think it should have been done you can import the obj and check it yourself

Yeah you do get those files we won't get into that right now but it is kind of a little technical but it's pretty cool with how this all works  but you can

Have all your projects you can have unlimited projects in your account so you can leave you scan something you just leave it in your account

As we talk Greg we're expecting that as time goes on either on right now the online count is

I can't delete projects I can't move them around I can't put them in folders so there's it's still kind of basic so just everybody be

Patient they are working on all sorts of things with the software and I think you mentioned that's one thing that that you

That you're working on is making the online experience a little bit better

I got one one future focused question for you Greg have you guys

Considered putting any kind of marker tags for triangulating from one scan to the next

 We haven't generally that's not going to improve the accuracy 

Too much the reference measurements do something kind of similar  there wouldn't really

Be much of a benefit to doing that given how this technology actually works

Gotcha does Canvas have any plans to try to make the scans so that they're more

More like what matterport's providing as far as clarity on the picture and stuff

Not in the near term it's something long-term we may decide to do it's just not something that we hear a

Ton from our current customers because it's good enough while it's not perfect and

Beautiful yeah it's it's good enough to go back and revisit and pull a measurement that you may have forgotten

 And it's good enough for us to be able to convert it into the cad model and that's really that's really the area

That we're we're experts in the conversion of that data to a username

And the main reason I ask is most of my clients I don't do any building anymore so all my clients I’m just going measuring the house for them so it's

Nice if I can give them clear pictures of what's what in the

House you know yeah because sometimes they don't they haven't even been to the house yet sometimes yeah

So I think what I’m going to try to do possibly is get a gopro and put it on a bicycle helmet

And just have it with me while I’m scanning well there you go give him the movie

There you go that's the way to do it  anyway lots of opportunity here for 

Cool things that you can do it on on the job site to help increase your effectiveness and how quickly you

Can get these plans out to people so sure that's mainly what I wanted to point out today so Greg I appreciate you

Being and if any if anybody's got any questions you can always email me at hello at Canvas.io and either myself or

My colleague will will respond to you relatively pretty quick okay Canvas io Canvas.io remember the Chief x

Perfect  as your 100 off code and 

There you go so Greg thanks a ton for being here this is anytime thanks for having me one more

Question Greg there was a comment back here a little ways that said they were taking three to

Four days to get their scans back you want to comment on that at all sure yeah I mean I I’m not sure when that was but

I will tell you  we ran into a bit of a processing issue when frankly when when

Russia invaded ukraine we had a  operational office run out of there many

Of our our operational managers were based in kharkiv and they had to relocate so we they spent about two

Weeks offline  and and we were just really kind of scrambling to try and

Keep our operations just up and running  to the point where we had to shut down certain formats  so today all of

Our formats are back up and running we're at full capacity unless you're submitting a very large job today  you

You should get it back within that 48 hours okay cool that is really cool

So again Greg thank you  you'll be hearing more from me about this awesome great

And  not you Greg but everybody else well you're going to hear from me too Greg so

Sure you got it I love the technology I think it's here to stay and I think it's only better and

Better as time goes on so it's going to be a great asset to have as part of your toolbox to get your Chief Architect

Plans done faster and quicker and better and all that other good stuff

All right guys thanks for being on the show and we'll catch you next time you guys can still stay on you while I end the broadcast so

We'll see everybody have a good one