Overlay tool for planning Pano locations

Recently I’ve been taking the time to carefully mark out on floor plans the exact locations where I would like Panos to be captured. The intent is to optimise the capturing process so that time is spent where it’s absolutely needed, and not wasted where it’s not.

But one of the problems with the DroneDeploy mobile Ground app is that you cannot display more than one overlay at a time. e.g. the Architect’s floor plan, and with my Pano locations.
At the moment I need to use a PDF editor to merge these two PDFs together, and then upload that file to DD.

That then got me thinking, DD ideally needs a built-in planning tool.

And, DD already has something very close to what we need in the form of a Media Group. The only downside is that this is only visible once media is added.

So, what if an empty Media Group could be added to the view for planning purposes.

For this I would firstly propose a change to how a Media Group is displayed on the overlay.
Take the following mockup. An empty Media Group would be placed. It would display as a solid small circle, with another circle around it is indicative of the Media Group Radius defined in the project settings.
Any Media captured within the radius would be added to the Group, and the inner circle would display the number of media it contains. For all other media that is placed outside of a planning Media Group can still display as per the image above. This would help make the distinction between a deliberately planned group vs a group that was not planned.

Lastly, I know that some might also be thinking about how the view would know its scale for the planning Media Group’s Radius.

  1. When an overlayed is aligned using the Exterior view, then it assumes correct scaling.
  2. And as DD moves forward, and to remain a competitive platform especially with BIM integration, the Interiors will need to assume correct and accurate scaling.
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