# LiDAR apartment scan with Rhino on iPhone

> Room-by-room LiDAR with Rhino on iPhone — layout checks, limits of consumer scanning, and when it beats full CAD.

- HTML page: https://antoineboucher.info/CV/blog/posts/rhino-lidar-apartment-scan/
- Language: en
- Translation (fr): https://antoineboucher.info/CV/blog/fr/posts/rhino-lidar-apartment-scan/index.md
- Published: 2024-01-02
- Updated: 2026-05-22
- Tags: LiDAR, Rhino, IOS, 3D Scanning, Architecture
- Author: Antoine Boucher (https://antoineboucher.info/CV/index-en.html)We used **Rhino on iPhone** with **LiDAR** to scan our apartment in **January 2024** — not for permit drawings, but to answer layout questions before buying furniture or arguing about wall space.

## Why bother

LiDAR on a recent iPhone captures depth fast. **Rhino** turns that into geometry you can orbit on the phone and sanity-check dimensions. It is lighter than a full desktop CAD job for “will this desk fit?” and cheaper than hiring a scan for a rental unit.

I was not trying to replace a surveyor — I wanted **relative confidence**: hallway width, closet depth, whether a 60" TV wall is real or wishful thinking.

## Limits you hit on day one

| Limit | What we did |
|-------|-------------|
| **Glossy / dark surfaces** | Missed patches on glass and TV screen — fill mentally |
| **Clutter** | Chairs and boxes become “bumpy walls” — scan before moving day |
| **Drift** | Long loops without closure — revisit start point slowly |
| **Export** | Phone mesh is enough for measure; detailed NURBS still desktop work |

## How we scanned

Room by room, walking slowly while the mesh updated. No tripod, no professional rig — consumer hardware and patience.

### Living room

Largest open area — establishes whether the mesh “feels” the right scale. We paused at corners so the depth camera could see both walls; rushing here made later rooms look slightly shrunk. The TV wall was the reference dimension we checked against a tape measure afterward (within a few centimeters, good enough for furniture).

### Hallway and closet

Narrow spaces show **drift** fastest. I walked the hall twice: once forward, once back, closing the loop at the front door. The closet scan was mostly for depth — “will a deep shelf fit?” — not for pretty renders.

### Bedroom

Furniture stayed in place on purpose. Beds and dressers become lumpy geometry; that is fine if you only need clearance paths, not a showroom model. If you need clean walls for renovation planning, empty the room first — we learned that the hard way on the closet door swing.

![Scan workflow on iPhone — mesh building while walking the room](https://antoineboucher.info/CV/blog/posts/rhino-lidar-apartment-scan/images/Screenshot-from-2024-01-02-22-41-35.png)

The live mesh is the quality gate: grey holes mean “walk that patch again,” not “export and hope.”

![Reviewing the captured mesh in Rhino — checking coverage before trusting a dimension](https://antoineboucher.info/CV/blog/posts/rhino-lidar-apartment-scan/images/Screenshot-from-2024-01-02-22-42-01.png)

Rhino on phone is where I rotated the capture and eyeballed whether two walls are actually parallel — faster than sending a raw mesh to desktop for a yes/no layout question.

## Stills from the capture

These are export stills — useful when explaining the scan to someone who will not open the app.

![Room capture — wide angle of meshed living space](https://antoineboucher.info/CV/blog/posts/rhino-lidar-apartment-scan/images/1781a950-9e10-4bcd-b142-1711d9e73881.jpg)

![Additional view — alternate angle to spot holes in coverage](https://antoineboucher.info/CV/blog/posts/rhino-lidar-apartment-scan/images/f33bc6af-8bf5-4f68-b9f0-6c1572258bff.jpg)

## When it paid off

Handheld LiDAR plus a focused modeling app is enough for **early layout exploration**. If the scan survives one furniture purchase decision, it already paid for the hour spent.

Same “digital → physical” thread as **[skate rack CAD](https://antoineboucher.info/CV/blog/posts/skate-rack-cad-to-object/)** and later **[AI figurines / 3D print](https://antoineboucher.info/CV/blog/posts/ai-figurines-3d-printing/)** — different fidelity, same habit: model before you cut or buy.

## Related posts

- [Networking evolution — home lab](https://antoineboucher.info/CV/blog/posts/home-networking-evolution/) — infrastructure at home, different problem
- [Skate rack — from CAD to plywood](https://antoineboucher.info/CV/blog/posts/skate-rack-cad-to-object/)