Canvas Lite for Homeowners Reviews

by Smooth1784

Literally any room scanning app can do what this one does. Most of the time better. The usage of LiDAR is a gimmick. You only get more resolution in a scan using it which allows for subjectively more accuracy. That doesn’t mean anything when room scanning other than a boost in processing speed. That boost is ignored by this company forcing users to upload their scans for processing. Don’t buy into this greedy company. There are plenty of alternatives that offer the exact same functionality. Most don’t even need the LiDAR Scanner but simply benefit from having it. They also don’t require you to upload a customers private information to this company’s servers to “process”. The amount of information that can be harvested from scans like these is sickening. GPS data, network information, any photos or family pictures hanging on the wall, a full blueprint of a space along with the location of all the valuables. You are forced to upload all of it and give it over to be stored and processed remotely for anything usable. I’m guessing the steel sack it takes to then charge folks $0.15/ sq ft for these scans is so that the information can be adequately safeguarded and encrypted but I highly doubt that the case. Even if the info is properly handled, what stops this company from just selling that info to advertisers for a nice amount? Don’t be fooled by a gimmick.

by Neretinus

Like many of those who jumped into that LiDAR fad, I’ve had luxury to devote my time to investigating the available 3D scanners on my my new iPhone. Ultimately, CanvasLite went to my folder named “crap” very fast. I’m not going to mention any solutions to avoid marketing, but there are applications that allow you to use non-LiDAR equipped devices to capture what CanvasLite is doing but with many more other options unavailable here. For example, you capture the world around you from one spot and you can’t really teleport within the space (technically you can but there will be too many artifacts making the output unusable). In other solutions, you can capture the space from different spots to then teleport more freely. In short, CanvasLite doesn’t seem to be employing 3D scanning affordances well, if at all.

by Viper83181

Never could get CanvasLite to scan. First, at least in this model iPhone, it forces you into rotating your phone into landscape orientation when you try to do a scan which greatly reduces its angle of view (the tutorial and media all show holding the phone in portrait, i.e normal, orientation). Second, I tried large/med/small rooms with excellent lighting. Both empty and full of furniture. At no point did CanvasLite get past the spinning dots around the “hold still” initialization portion of the 360 scan module. For S&Gs, I even mounted my phone to a tripod..can’t get more still than that! No dice. I find it asinine that they didn’t properly QC CanvasLite for one of the most popular (read: prolific) iPhone models out there.

by Nathan Pierce @MicroBrewr

I scanned my living room. It looked ok. I did the more detailed walkthrough scan of the combined living room and dining room. I probably spent a half hour scanning the space, then another 15-20 minutes waiting for it to upload and process. It was worse than the first. It was downright horrible. The images for ceiling were splattered across the wall. The images for wall were spread across the floor. It was all mixed up. I think it wasn’t user error, I watched the tutorial…

by Kriskamiska

Recently they changed how they price their scans to CAD and sketch up from $29 per room to $ .15 a square foot. I did my scans per usual for a clients large home. I was expecting it to be around $700 with the 23 rooms but then it ended up holding $1300 out of my account! This is almost double what it was before. Not worth it. I love the capabilities of CanvasLite and it saves me so much time, but not for double what I was previously paying. I will be looking for an alternative that is priced more fairly.

by Floydthebasset

I’m an architect and I scanned our conference room using CanvasLite and my iPhone 12pro. I then paid $30some dollars to have the room converted to autocad and sketchup.

The resulting 3-D model was not accurate. None of the dimensions matched. Some were off by a few inches, others were off by 3 feet.

It’s a fun tool to get footage of a room for later review. As such, I can see a use for it. But you still need to amanually survey the space.

by Overzeetop

CanvasLite is reasonably nice; not as clean as Matterport, but still easy enough to use. The biggest drawback is that CanvasLite is a dead end for your captures. You can pay for CAD translation (and, I would hope, cleanup) but there is no option to export your captured point cloud or surface map to a file, nor is there any option to export a stitched equirectangular/360 image. As an enthusiast it’s probably fine for the “cool” factor, but as a professional there needs to be a direct export to local file for saving/archiving.

by Cosinepi

CanvasLite has the ability to only scan one room and not the whole home as presented on the website. Also only one point can be taken, so the other side of the couch that isn’t in the view wouldn’t be included.

Otherwise the concept is awesome and the scanning is much faster than any other application.

by Bran321

USE SCANIVERSE INSTEAD USE FORGE INSTEAD No one is going to pay $3 per scan. Sorry. Users are going to laugh when you’re forced to close up shop or sell off your proprietary technology. I’m sure you guys are only interested in profit anyways as it’s clear the free usage is a pointless burden that possibly was used for analytics. I get it, it’s cloud processed. It’s not by any measure worth it qualitatively, and especially in quantities. It’s LIDAR on the phone. Give us a free built-in processing option. Or don’t — you’ve handicapped the life out of your app so far.

by Kalmpact

Generally a good scanning experience compared to competitors.

Find it very frustrating that it shows me a CAD view but will not let me download it.

by Potter497

CanvasLite works really well. Scans can be a little grainy and lacking sometimes in detail. I would give it a 5 rating if you could combine scans to get a more detailed scan of a room. I suppose I’m also just used to total station Lidar scans that you can have combined scans that also merge data points to give a more detailed scan.
Overall, a great app for a phone. It’s crazy how far we’ve come that we can now do this on a cellphone.

by Acrane11488

CanvasLite is really cool and great for detailed views of a room. Sometimes the scanning ends early before you’re complete. It would be great if you can take an existing scan and update it. So you can fill in the details and bits missed instead of having to start a whole new scan.

by Keggerbra

Lots of possibilities for this one but functionality currently is very basic, however as is - it works extremely well!

* Please add a suggestion input field on your website or in CanvasLite . I’m sure more will come from others.

Important features needed
1) the ability to save a scan and resume at a later point in time (or from different device)
2) different resolution options
3) multiple scan prospectives
4) external storage support (physical or iCloud/ftp/etc

by Kurtdesign1

The folks at Canvas were more amazing of a resource than I would have thought possible. Knowledge, integrity and respect were my main takeaways of our interactions and that's considering the fact that I was trying to utilize their app in a somewhat experimental manner. After our numerous conversations over email and video I was left requesting that they keep my contacts on file should the needs I have ever align with their business plans. I'm left satisfied with their product, help & goals and look forward to the next opportunity we have to work together. Such a great product and team.

by Jeddings

CanvasLite is a game changer. I’m in the middle of a garage remodel and it’s been a huge pain trying to get everything just right. I’m trying to show my contractor what I have in mind, and CanvasLite made it super simple to do that. Definitely using this when it’s time to remodel other parts of the house!

by Christensen Design Studio

I love CanvasLite! And customer support is phenomenal! I can scan a room and get a scan to CAD drawing in just a few days. I use it for my interior design business. Give it a try!

by Greta415

I am loving CanvasLite. I just did a challenging whole house layout with it and you guys nailed it. I use it to put my drawings into a CAD program(SketchUp Pro) and it works like a dream. Does it way cheaper(and better) than if I measured and drew it myself.

by C0NCERNED GAMER

I’m not sure why CanvasLite has a low rating. It’s possible that it has changed since those reviews.

CanvasLite does exactly what it claims to do. As of this review date, I have not been charged anything and have successfully scanned my bedroom. CanvasLite is not perfect, but no app is. I’ve only used the 360 degree scan (not cad) and the results were good. Definitely worth trying the scan itself, not sure about the cad render yet.

by Ejmc10

Not only is CanvasLite a perfect way to demo LiDAR on the iPhone 12 Pro, but once scanned in, the ability to walk a room in AR feels like the future. Can’t wait to see the auto CAD work done. Huge congrats on making this so slick and so easy to use with a nice, simple interface.

by L.Interiors

Wow! I had a difficult room with many angles to design for a remodel and Canvas came through. While their turn around time was about 5 days for Chief Architect in the past, it now was 48 hours and that was over the weekend!! And, quick response to questions. Love CanvasLite.

by Ineretin

Like many of those who jumped into that LiDAR fad, I’ve had luxury to devote my time to investigating the available 3D scanners on my my new iPhone. Ultimately, CanvasLite went to my folder named “crap” very fast. I’m not going to mention any solutions to avoid marketing, but there are applications that allow you to use non-LiDAR equipped devices to capture what CanvasLite is doing but with many more other options unavailable here. For example, you capture the world around you from one spot and you can’t really teleport within the space (technically you can but there will be too many artifacts making the output unusable). In other solutions, you can capture the space from different spots to then teleport more freely. In short, CanvasLite doesn’t seem to be employing 3D scanning affordances well, if at all.