Most of us have experienced the agony of measuring and remeasuring a home; from getting ready to insert a listing in the MLS or just to double check square footage, measuring with a tape measure can be a hassle. The same is true of office spaces: knowing how much space you have to work with is critical, but it would also be nice to have the ability to visualize several different ways to work within that space.
Having your floor plan on-hand is not always practical, and does little in the way of helping you visualize where to place your furniture, appliances, and other critical aspects of your home or office. Now you can let your phone’s camera and a new app do all the heavy lifting for you.
MagicPlan uses your phone’s camera to measure the dimensions of each room, which means you can have your whole home or office measured in a matter of minutes, instead of spending a couple of hours wrangling a tape measure, or buying a laser measuring tape and running from room to room. It also gives you the ability to place and manipulate objects within your space as well. And with the latest update, users can expect 95% precision when measuring with your camera, but if you are looking for 100% precision the MagicPlan app can be paired with any Bluetooth enabled measuring device.
A quick three-step process
Measuring and recording breaks down to a three step process: take a picture of your room’s corners (if your corners are not visible, you can use the ceiling corner instead), fine tune your room, arrange and assemble rooms with your fingers. When you get ready to arrange and assemble, there are also over 400 objects available to document your inside map; not just furniture, but electrical and roofing objects as well.
Each item is smart and can be completely customized with room plan dimensions, labels, page layouts, disclaimers, title blocks, photos/logos, watermarks, and scale. You can also generate reports, based on the data you enter. You can also download a PDF of your plans, back it up to the cloud, or share with anyone you choose. The free version is watermarked, but it does not interfere with reading the plans or dimensions and is available for both Android and iOS users.
While not everyone is in a constant state of redecorating, there are a million reasons why keeping your floor plan in your pocket is useful, especially when the app is so easy to use.
For Realtors, this is a great way to keep a floor plan of the houses you list, so you can show potential clients the current layout and let them see just how a room can be manipulated with different items. It could also aid in preventing you from showing and reshowing the same property multiple times, due to the client forgetting how the house is laid out. For home buyers, you can use this app to quickly snap the floor plan of houses you tour to keep them fresh in your mind and decide which one will work best for you.
Jennifer Walpole is a Senior Staff Writer at The American Genius and holds a Master's degree in English from the University of Oklahoma. She is a science fiction fanatic and enjoys writing way more than she should. She dreams of being a screenwriter and seeing her work on the big screen in Hollywood one day.
