Photogrammetry
Turn drone photos of a customer's roof into a measured 3D model you can plan solar against.
Photogrammetry turns drone imagery of a roof into a measured 3D model. You upload the photos through the Portal, and the finished model imports into your residential planning as a measured-accuracy roof so you can place panels precisely. A job typically finishes in about 15 to 45 minutes.
This service in one place
Photogrammetry shows up in two parts of the product, and each has its own dedicated page:
- Turn the service on and give your users access. For that, see the Photogrammetry settings page under Settings > Planning & offer > Photogrammetry.
- Create a job, upload imagery, review the flight path, run the model, and import it into a plan. For the full walkthrough, see 3D drone photogrammetry under the offer's 3D planning, plan-building section.
This page is the Services-area pointer to those two surfaces. Use the Settings page to turn the service on, and the plan-building page to run a job.
Note
The model builds itself, and bad photos are caught first Model construction starts automatically once your photos are uploaded, on by default. Photos whose location sits well away from the rest of the set are flagged before construction begins; the usual cause is a shot from another site dropped into the wrong job, and catching it up front avoids a degraded model you would only notice at the end. You are also notified as the job moves: started, preliminary model available, completed, failed. The preliminary-model notification is the useful one day to day — you can begin work on it without waiting for the full reconstruction.
Things to know
- Upload happens in the Portal. Use a desktop Portal browser to upload your drone imagery.
- A job needs at least 15 images, and 60 to 100 are recommended for good coverage. DJI drones produce the cleanest results; imagery from other drones may capture less orientation detail.
- The model feeds residential planning. A finished job imports into the offer's planning as the 3D roof base.
- Turn the service on and grant access first. Enable the service and give it to the users who need it on the Photogrammetry settings page (Settings > Planning & offer > Photogrammetry) before creating a job.
- Photogrammetry pairs naturally with Planning Service. Fly the drone, model the roof, then have Reonic design the system for you. See Planning Service.
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