Every building should have a digital twin. Start yours today.

Why buildings lose their information

Buildings are the most valuable things we own, and almost none of them have an accurate, current record of what they are. The way this has always been done doesn't work. Information about a building gets produced in bursts — for a permit, for a sale — and then it goes stale, gets contradicted on site, or simply disappears. Everyone downstream pays for that, forever.

Skanna is a different approach to the whole thing. One accurate digital twin per building, made once from whatever you already have, kept current as the building changes, and handed on with the property when it sells. Drawings, visuals, quantities and operations all come out of that single model instead of being commissioned separately and going out of date separately. That is how the waste disappears — and it only works if the record is accurate, live, and in one place. That is what this platform is for.

Four ways to start

All four end at the same model. Only the first one needs a scanner — everything after it, the authoring, the drawings and the twin, happens in a browser tab.

Mix them freely: scan the ground floor, trace the architect's DXF for the first, and draw the loft from a tape measure — it's one model either way. And it doesn't have to be finished to be useful. Start today with whatever you already have, and build on it as you go.

What comes out of it

One model per building, and everything else generated from it. Change the model once and the drawings, the visuals and the data all follow — they're views of the same file, so they can't contradict each other. And the model itself doesn't expire when the project ends: it lives online as the building's permanent record.

01

Interactive experiences

The finished building on a URL — no app, no login. Orbit it, walk through it, click anything for its specification, measure any two points. A real sun study on the site's own coordinates, light fixtures that switch on, and — from lists you curate — finishes and furniture the viewer can choose for themselves.

Open a live twin →

02

Automatic drawings

Plans, elevations and sections generated onto your own title block, with dimensions, grid bubbles, room schedules and a legend. PDF, SVG or DXF at any standard scale. A revision is a re-issue from the model — minutes, not a redraw.

See a generated sheet →

03

Visuals & building data

The render is the model — no separate visualisation pipeline and no render budget per campaign. Every wall, opening, fixture and service run carries its real specification, so areas, quantities, schedules and inventory come out of the same file.

See what a twin knows →

04

One place where all your buildings live — permanently

Every property you own or manage in a single online portal, each with its twin, its drawings, its documents, its media and a dated log of everything that has ever been done to it. It is not a project folder that closes when the job does: the twin keeps getting updated for as long as the building exists — renovations, replacements, service history, new measurements — so the record never goes stale again. Reach it from any browser, share exactly as much of it as you choose, and hand the digital twin over with the physical property when you sell it, the way keys and deeds change hands. The next owner inherits twenty years of accurate building information instead of starting from a tape measure.

See the property portal →

How a building gets there

Four steps, once per building — then it stays alive. We recommend starting with the Skanna scanner: it was developed specifically to capture building sites, not objects or faces, so it gives you true-to-scale geometry, photos and 360° panoramas in one walk-through, and it is by a distance the fastest and most accurate way in. No iPhone, no 3D model and no drawings to hand? It still works — trace a floor-plan image, an SVG or a DXF, or draw the building from scratch with a tape measure. Everything above is an output of the same model.

Where you'd start

Everybody gets the same platform — the whole of it. Scanning, browser modelling, drawing sets, the published twin, the property portal and the operations side are one product, not tiers sold to different trades. The only difference between the rows below is which part you'll reach for first; the rest is sitting there waiting, and most people end up using all of it. The sales twin a developer publishes and the maintenance record their operations team works from are the same file.

The Skanna app

Optional, and the best way in if you have the hardware. Skanna turns your iPhone or iPad Pro into a professional LiDAR scanner. Capture dimensionally accurate 3D models of any space in minutes, entirely on your device, entirely private.

No Pro iPhone? Nothing else on this page needs one — see the four ways to start.

Skanna Web — BIM Author & property portal

Two halves of one product. The BIM Author is an easy-to-use authoring tool that runs entirely in the browser: trace a scan, an old floor plan or a model you already own — or draw from nothing — build a real IFC model floor by floor, and skip the heavy CAD suite. For a large share of properties, Skanna does the job of SketchUp, Blender or Revit, and most people learn it in a day. The property portal is where those models then live: every building you own or manage in one place, online, kept current for as long as the building exists.

• 3D viewer — orbit, pan, zoom, and dollhouse view of your scans, right in the browser
• Pins & collaboration — numbered pins on the model with notes, replies, and photos
• Measure — real-world distances on the web model, just like in the app
• 360° panoramas — captured panoramas open in a full spherical viewer, linked to the model
• CAD & IFC viewing — open IFC files alongside or overlaid on your scan
• BIM Author — trace a scan, a floor-plan image, an SVG or DXF, or nothing at all, in a 2D plan editor, and export a real IFC building model floor by floor
• Drawings — plans, elevations and sections generated onto a title block, exported as PDF, SVG or DXF
• Shared digital twin — publish the finished model to a link with sun study, lighting, building services, and curated material and furniture choices the viewer picks from
• Property portal — every building you own or manage on its own page, with folders, documents, media and a dated log of everything that has ever been added
• Operations — inventory, condition, service history and renovation progress recorded on the objects themselves, so the record updates instead of expiring
• Sharing & handover — give a contractor, a buyer or a valuer exactly the access you choose, and pass the whole twin on when the property changes hands

Skanna Web — the property portal

Skanna Web — BIM Author

Every surface you draw carries an Offer choices button — that's where the material options further down this page come from. Put every wall of a room in one set and the buyer restyles the room, not a wall.

Skanna Web — the finished IFC building model

However you started, you end up here: export the finished IFC and open it in SketchUp, Revit, Blender, or your web CAD platform of choice — to plan, design, and extract data — or keep it on the Skanna platform for further development.

The property portal — where the buildings live afterwards

A finished model that sits on somebody's laptop is just another drawing set waiting to go stale. On the portal, each building has a permanent page: its scans, panoramas and photos, its drawing sets, its documents, its published twin, and a dated site log of every scan, pin, comment and change anyone has made. Work on it from any browser, from anywhere, and keep working on it for the life of the building — a renovation, a new service run, a replaced boiler or a fresh scan of one floor updates the same record rather than starting a new one. Then hand it over: the twin transfers with the property, so the next owner inherits the whole history instead of an empty folder. For teams running many units, this is the operations and maintenance system as well — bookings, service jobs and unit records against real geometry, replacing the scattered tools that never talked to each other.

Permit drawings, straight from the model

The model also produces the paper deliverable. Plans, elevations and sections are generated onto a real title block with dimensions, grid bubbles, room schedules and a legend — then exported as PDF, SVG or DXF at any standard scale.

Drawings — A3 floor plan at 1:100

Drawings — section A-A at 1:50

The shared digital twin

When the model is finished, publish it to a link. Anyone you send it to opens a fully rendered building in their browser — no software, no account, no download. They can orbit it, walk through it, click anything for its data, measure it, and see how it behaves through the day.

Digital twin — dollhouse view, after dark

Sun study

Real solar geometry for the building's own coordinates. Move the time of day and the date and the shadows follow — so a buyer can see which rooms get the morning light and where the terrace is shaded in the afternoon. Times are local solar time, so shadows stay comparable year-round no matter what daylight saving does.

Midsummer, 07:45

Midsummer night, 00:45 — sun 6° below the horizon

Lighting

Every light fixture in the model is a real emitter — spotlights, ceiling lights, pendants, wall sconces and LED strips, each listed and each with its own switch. Throw them all on or off at once, and set the colour temperature anywhere from warm to daylight. The view at the top of this section is the same building with the fixtures on.

Fifteen fixtures, each on its own switch, at 2500 K

Materials the viewer can change

Click any wall, floor or ceiling and swap what it's made of — painted, wood, tile, stone, brick or concrete — then pick a tone. The change is applied to that surface alone, and one control resets it while another resets everything at once. Whatever they change belongs to them: the published model is never touched. Where you'd rather not leave the whole palette open, you can group the surfaces that change together and publish only the named options you're willing to supply — and one choice then restyles every surface in the group.

A floor slab switched to ash wood

Furniture, appliances and equipment

Furnish the unit from a catalogue of real products at their real dimensions — named manufacturer pieces alongside generic joinery and white goods, every one listed with its footprint in centimetres. Pick an item and the twin tells you what to do with it: click a floor to drop it, or a wall to stand it against, turning it in 45° steps as you go. What they place is theirs alone — your published model is never altered, and one button clears everything they added. Publish the full catalogue, or curate it down to the pieces and sizes you're prepared to supply.

Placing a fireplace from the catalogue

Search it, click it, read its data

Every wall, opening, fixture, appliance and service run is a real object carrying its own specification. Search the model by name to jump straight to one, or just click it: the twin gives you its type, its storey, its dimensions, and whatever properties the model's author attached to it — manufacturer, capacity, serial numbers, service dates, links to the manual.

Every object in the model, listed by discipline

Building services

Ventilation, electrical, water, drainage, gas and data runs are real objects in the model too, each one selectable and listed by discipline. Turn the structure translucent to see all of them at once, or turn on airflow and heat to see, indicatively, where air moves and what warms a room.

X-ray — straight through the structure

Pins — the detail a model can't hold on its own

Drop a numbered pin on anything that needs more than a specification: a photograph of the consumer unit as it was actually wired, a 360° panorama of the room as built, a note for whoever comes next. The pin sits on the surface it describes, and clicking it opens what you attached.

A pin holding a photo of the real consumer unit

A pin that opens a 360° panorama

Walk it and measure it

Drop into first person and walk the building at eye height, or stay in orbit and take a dimension off any two points. Switch the whole twin between a realistic render and a clean sketch look, whichever suits who you're showing it to.

Walk mode

Two-point measure, in sketch style

The twin is a link, not an app. Send it to a buyer, a contractor or a lender and it opens on their phone or laptop exactly as you published it.

How pricing works

Start free, pay only when Skanna starts doing real work for you — at a fraction of the cost of a traditional CAD license.

No scanner? Nothing here needs one — the whole platform runs in a browser. The first ten people who email about access get seven days of it free. Final pricing is announced at launch.

Learn it — the Skanna course

Sign up and learn the entire chain, end to end: walk into a building with a phone, walk out with drawings, a digital twin and a client who pays for it. There is no other platform that covers all of this in one place — no jumping between a scanning app, a CAD suite, a rendering tool and a viewer, no converting formats at every step, no plug-ins, no special installations, no heavy CAD software and no workstation to buy. That is exactly why it can be taught in days rather than years, and why one person can now deliver what used to take three companies.

1

Scan a building properly

• Planning the route, and preparing a property before you arrive
• Capture technique for interiors, exteriors and the awkward parts
• Panoramas, photos and pins — collecting everything in one visit

2

Work from drawings you already have

• Using a plan image, PDF page, SVG or DXF as a scaled reference
• Setting scale once, and proving it against a second known dimension
• Modelling a building with no scan and no drawings at all

3

The browser CAD tool

• Walls, openings, slabs, roofs, stairs, services and finishes
• Tracing a scan into a correct, structured IFC model floor by floor
• Giving every object its real specification, so the data comes free

4

Getting drawings out

• Plans, elevations and sections onto your own title block
• Dimensions, grid bubbles, room schedules and legends
• Exporting PDF, SVG and DXF at the right scale, and re-issuing revisions

5

Creating the digital twin

• Publishing to a link, with sun study, lighting and building services
• Curating the material and furniture choices a viewer gets to make
• Making it look good — the difference between a model and a sales tool

6

Selling the service

• Who actually buys this: developers, owners, operators, agents, architects
• What to charge, how to scope a building, and what a day's work covers
• The pitch that lands — and the demo that closes it

Requirements

To model, publish and deliver — a browser. That's the whole list. Skanna Web runs in any modern desktop browser. No install, no CAD seat, no plug-ins.

Scanning is the fastest way to get measured geometry. It is not the way in. The model can start from a floor-plan image, an SVG or DXF, a GLB or IFC you already own, or nothing but a tape measure.

Support & contact

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