PlaceAnew for contractors: measure the whole house for the estimate in one walk

The measuring visit is the most expensive part of a bid you might not win

A tape, a laser, a notepad and a sketch of the house that never quite closes. Back at the truck you notice the hallway has no dimension, the bathroom window is missing, and the kitchen run was written on the back of a receipt. Then somebody drives back. All of that happens before you have the job, and none of it is billable.

Estimating time is real money. The median US cost estimator earns $37.86 an hour.^[2] PlaceAnew turns the measuring part of that time into one calm walk through the house.

Put your own numbers on it. Say measuring and writing up each house takes you 2 hours and you bid 10 houses a month: that is 20 hours, about $757 a month at the $37.86 median, before mileage and the return trips.

What one walk measures for your estimate

Hold an iPhone or iPad Pro and walk from room to room. PlaceAnew uses Apple's LiDAR Scanner and RoomPlan to find the walls, doors, windows, openings and furniture as you go, and records a video of the walk at the same time. When you stop, the plan is drawn: rooms named and measured, doors and windows in place. The PDF report adds a property summary with the numbers a takeoff starts from.

Line on your estimate	What PlaceAnew gives you
Flooring, carpet, tile	Square footage of every room and the total, plus the floor type it saw in each room, marked as an estimate
Paint and drywall	Wall area, average ceiling height, and the area of every door, window and opening, to subtract
Baseboard and trim	Perimeter, room dimensions on the plan, and a measure tool for any run
Doors and windows	Each one listed with its width and area
Kitchen cabinets and counters	The kitchen designer opens on the scanned walls, with cabinet prices
Anything you missed	Walk: the recording of your walk, lined up with the plan, so you can look again without driving back

Free measuring, not another estimating subscription

You already price jobs your way: a spreadsheet, your estimating software, your own unit costs. What you need is the measurements, fast and complete. PlaceAnew does that part and stays out of the rest. Scanning, floor plans, 3D, editing, the kitchen designer with prices and exports are free.

Other contractor scanning apps bill by the job. magicplan's pricing page says plans start at 10 new projects a month and each project over your plan costs $40 (checked 8 November 2026).^[3] PlaceAnew charges nothing per scan.

The numbers leave the app the way you need them: PDF report, SVG drawing, DXF for CAD and USDZ 3D model. The PDF goes to the client with the bid, the DXF goes into CAD, and the room areas go into your own estimate.

How accurate is a phone scan for bidding?

Accurate enough to bid from. The clearest public test is a 2026 peer-reviewed study at ISARC, the main conference on automation in construction. An iPad running an app built on Apple's RoomPlan, the same technology PlaceAnew uses, was compared with a terrestrial laser scanner in a house and two office floors. It found all 8 rooms of the house, its total room area came within about 5% of the laser-scanned model, and room shapes matched closely.^[1]

In that house the app measured slightly less total area than the laser, not more,^[1] so price materials the way you always do: the scanned area plus your normal waste allowance.

In our own office, all 7 wall lengths that compare one to one with a hand-measured plan came within 2.5 inches, median under 1 inch, and the longest wall, 17' 2", came out a third of an inch long.^[4] PlaceAnew draws a wall it could not see as a dashed line and marks anything it estimated as "estimate", so every number on the plan tells you where it came from.

Measure in minutes, not a day of measuring and redrawing

In the same study, the RoomPlan app went from scan to finished building model in 32 minutes. Laser scanning and modelling the same buildings by hand took 20 hours.^[1] Apple designed RoomPlan for scans of a few minutes each, rooms up to 30 by 30 feet, and whole single-floor homes up to about 2,000 square feet.^[5][6] Bigger houses are scanned floor by floor.

We timed it ourselves too. One room's walls took 8 min 43 s with a tape and a rough paper sketch, no cabinets, doors or windows. The PlaceAnew scan of the same room took 44 seconds and caught all of them, with a 3D model.^[7]

Win the job at the first visit

The contractor who shows the homeowner their own house in 3D at the kitchen table looks like the contractor who already started. Scan during the walkthrough, open the plan and the 3D model on the spot, and talk about the job while the others are still booking a measuring visit.

• Same-day numbers. The PDF report is ready before you leave the driveway. Send it by AirDrop, Mail or Messages.
• A kitchen the client can see. The kitchen designer opens on the scanned room with its real walls, doors and windows, with cabinet prices, so the conversation moves from "how much" to "which one".
• No return trip. Forgot an outlet, a window sill or a ceiling height? Open Walk and look again.
• One record of the job. The scan stays with the project: the plan, the 3D model and the walk. Edit a wall or rename a room, and earlier versions are kept.

From scan to estimate in five steps

1. Scan. Lights on, interior doors open. Walk calmly and sweep each wall from floor to ceiling. One floor per scan.
2. Review. Dashed walls and "estimate" labels show what PlaceAnew filled in. Move a wall or a door in the editor in seconds.
3. Export. Share the PDF report, or the DXF for CAD.
4. Take off. Room areas for flooring, wall and opening areas for paint and drywall, perimeter for trim. Add your waste allowance. The materials guide has the formulas.
5. Price and send. Your unit costs, your estimate, with the plan attached.

Questions contractors ask

Scan the next house you bid. If the plan saves you one return trip, it has paid for itself, and it costs nothing.