Space Mode captures site conditions in 3D from your phone, generating accurate floor plans, spatial reports, and models exportable to AutoCAD, Revit, SketchUp, and more.
Before You Start
1 Prepare your phone
- Charge fully before you begin. Scanning large spaces can use a significant amount of battery, especially on older phones. Bring a battery pack for multi-story buildings or long sessions
- Enable Do Not Disturb. A call or notification mid-scan can interrupt the capture and force you to start over
- Close background apps on older devices to free up memory before opening Polycam
Decide your route before starting. Start at the main entrance and always follow the left wall. This keeps you moving in a consistent direction through every room and hallway without backtracking.
3 Prepare the space
- Open all doors to rooms you intend to capture before starting. Going back to open them mid-scan breaks your path and can disrupt the mode. Additionally, this can affect the door swing interpretation in your 2D floorplan
- Turn on lights in every area you plan to scan
Starting the Scan
4 Start the capture
Open Polycam and tap the button. Select Space Mode to generate an accurately scaled floor plan and 3D mesh simultaneously. Aim the camera into the room and tap the white button to begin recording.
Scanning Technique
5 Move slowly and cover everything
Move the phone slowly up, down, left, and right as you walk the perimeter of each room along the left wall. The algorithm can only build from what it is shown. Missed areas are estimated, which reduces accuracy in dimensions and spatial reports.
Cover these areas specifically:
- Room features and built-ins - capture all sides of toilets, cabinets, sinks, and counters, including angles below and behind them
- Corners - make sure the white lines in the app follow the corners of each room as you scan. If the corner is not visible, it can affect the accuracy of the capture. To resolve, tap the flashlight icon while scanning.
- Ceilings and floors - point the camera up and down as you move through the space, not just straight ahead
- Purple areas in the app - aim to fill in all highlighted zones before moving on to the next room
A good rule of thumb is 2 minutes per 100 square feet. For a 1,500 sq ft unit, plan for around 30 minutes. Taking a few extra minutes on site can save hours later if it means you don't have to return for a rescan due to missing data or inaccurate dimensions.
Processing
6 Choose your processing method
After completing the full survey path, tap .
- On-device processing - such as Default, Dense and Custom, works without an internet connection and takes a few minutes for scans under 1,000 sq ft
- Cloud processing - uploads your capture data to Polycam's servers and processes it in the background. This is recommended for large scans over 5,000 sq ft as it is significantly faster.
Working with Your Capture
Available tools:
- Floor plan - view the automatically generated 2D floor plan. Tap to toggle interior and exterior measurements, furniture, total areas, room labels, compass, and wall thickness
- Report - generate a detailed spatial report of the space and download it as a PDF
- Measure - take linear and area measurements of any feature in the space, or tap to generate key measurements automatically
- Comments - drop notes on any part of the model for yourself or a colleague to reference later
- Share - send a link to the model directly to anyone's email
- Download - export the model in formats compatible with AutoCAD, Revit, SketchUp, and other design tools