The Best Phone Scanning App for Facility Management

Facilities teams use a scan for four things: space and area records, handing information to designers before a retrofit, documenting condition, and sharing what they captured with people who need it. Polycam covers the first three better. magicplan covers condition documentation better, because it was built around structured field reports. This guide takes each job in turn.

Compared

Both are effectively unlimited for a fixed portfolio. A magicplan project covers a property rather than a capture, so rescanning a building you already have does not consume another one.

Job One: Space and Area Records

Area schedules, occupancy planning, and churn all run on room-by-room numbers, and this is the most routine thing a facilities team does with a scan.

Polycam returns the numbers as a report. A Spatial Report gives each room’s floor area, perimeter, ceiling height and wall area, plus the fixtures, appliances and furniture detected in it with dimensions. Export as CSV and the schedule drops into a spreadsheet. What would otherwise be an afternoon of measuring and typing arrives with the capture.

magicplan produces areas on the sketch and exports CSV, so the data is available. Assembling a portfolio-wide area schedule is more manual.

Set wall thickness before you rely on the numbers. Thickness feeds the area calculation, so leaving it at a default changes every figure. If your area records answer to a published standard, check which one applies, since a scan measures interior surfaces and some standards measure from the exterior.

Job Two: Handing Information to a Designer

Before a retrofit, a fit-out, or a plant replacement, somebody outside your team needs the building as data rather than as a picture.

This is where point clouds decide it. Polycam exports PLY, LAS, PTS and XYZ on Business and Enterprise. A designer takes LAS through Autodesk ReCap into Revit and models against it, or takes PLY, PTS or XYZ into a platform that reads point clouds directly.

magicplan does not export point clouds. Their 3D output covers OBJ, USDZ and IFC. OBJ and USDZ are meshes, which are fine for reference and wrong for measuring against.

IFC is their advantage here, for one kind of team. If your organisation works in BIM and wants a model rather than survey data, magicplan’s IFC export goes straight into platforms that accept it, including Autodesk Tandem. From a Polycam capture that path runs through modelling, which takes longer and produces a model built to your standards rather than an automated conversion.

So the split is clean. If the designer wants survey data, you need the point cloud. If your organisation runs BIM and wants a model handed over, IFC is the shorter route.

Job Three: Documenting Condition

Recording what a space looks like, what is wrong with it, and what was agreed is a different task from measuring it.

magicplan is built for this. Photos, 360 images, notes, markups and custom forms attach to the plan, and the whole set exports as a structured PDF or web report. If your documentation involves inspection checklists or standard forms your team fills in every time, that is the product designed around it.

Polycam handles the lighter version. Comments pin to a specific location on the capture, take threaded replies, and carry a resolve state for tracking what has been dealt with. Tag a plant item with its model number, flag a defect, mark it resolved when the work is done. Comments work on every plan including free.

Virtual Walkthrough covers the detail a mesh loses. It retraces your capture path and places the original photographs where you took them, so a nameplate or a thin conduit run is readable from the source imagery. Business and Enterprise.

Neither detects plant equipment. Polycam’s automatic detection covers furniture, fixtures and appliances. An air handling unit or a distribution board will not appear as a tagged asset in either product, so identify those yourself.

Job Four: Sharing It

A capture that only its author can open is a file, not a record.

Polycam public links need no account. Send a URL and the recipient opens the capture in a browser with nothing installed. That matters when the person looking is a contractor arriving next week or a colleague who scans nothing.

This changes what a seat costs you. Per-seat pricing sounds worse than unlimited users until you count who actually captures. A team where two people scan and ten people view needs two seats, because viewing is free and needs no account. Unlimited users wins where everyone is capturing, which is uncommon in an in-house team.

Comments need an account, though. Anyone replying to or resolving a comment needs a Polycam login, so plan for that if a contractor is part of the loop.

magicplan shares through a project page that partners and clients can view and collaborate on.

Getting Data Into Your Systems

Neither product connects natively to a CAFM or IWMS platform, so the export file is the route in both cases.

Drawing registers take PDF for reference and DXF for anything that needs editing.

Space records take CSV, straight into a spreadsheet or a space management sheet.

Design and modelling take LAS through ReCap for Revit, or PLY, PTS and XYZ where the destination reads point clouds. From magicplan, IFC where the destination wants a model.

Name your exports consistently from the start. Building, floor, date. A register of forty files called “scan_final_v2” is a register nobody uses.

Building a Recapture Habit

The value of scanning a portfolio comes from the second capture more than the first, because that is when you can see what changed.

Tie captures to events, not a calendar. Fit-outs, churn moves, plant replacements and lease breaks are when a building actually changes. Quarterly scanning regardless produces files nobody opens.

Record your route and session boundaries. Two captures of the same floor compare properly only if they were taken the same way.

Include the plant rooms and risers. These are where facilities work happens and where existing drawings are usually worst.

If you are testing this against a real building, the 7-day Business trial covers scanning a site and producing the exports before you commit to seats.

What is the best phone scanning app for facility management?

Polycam for space records, designer handoffs and general documentation, because it produces per-room area data as a report and exports point clouds. magicplan if your work centres on inspection forms and structured condition reports, which is what it was built for.

Which one exports point clouds?

Polycam, in PLY, LAS, PTS and XYZ on Business and Enterprise. magicplan’s 3D exports are OBJ, USDZ and IFC, which are meshes and a BIM format rather than survey data.

Does per-seat pricing cost more than unlimited users?

Only if everyone captures. Polycam public links open in a browser with no account, so a team where two people scan and ten people view needs two seats.

Can either connect to my CAFM system?

Not natively. Both route through export files: PDF and DXF for drawings, CSV for area data, point clouds or IFC for anything being modelled.

How do I get room areas for a space schedule?

A Spatial Report gives per-room floor area, perimeter, ceiling height and wall area, and exports as CSV. Set wall thickness to match the real construction first, since thickness feeds the area calculation.

Does either identify building equipment automatically?

Neither identifies plant. Polycam detects furniture, fixtures and appliances. Tag plant items yourself, with Comments in Polycam or custom forms in magicplan.

Does rescanning a building cost extra?

Not on either product. Polycam captures are unlimited on a seat, and a magicplan project covers a property rather than a single capture.

How often should I rescan?

When the building changes rather than on a schedule. Fit-outs, churn moves and plant replacements are the triggers worth capturing.