Real companies. Real projects.
This is how solar companies, tradespeople, planning offices and drone service providers use Airclip Cloud to get from drone photo to finished result faster.
We used to count roof tiles and walk industrial roofs for hours
solmotion project plans and builds photovoltaic systems, on family homes as well as commercial halls. More than 100 employees work on many projects at the same time, and all of them need planning data they can rely on.
A roof measurement here used to start from a photo: identify the tile, look up its width, count the tiles, count everything else on the roof the same way, then rebuild all of it by hand in PV*SOL. Drawing on a satellite map instead could easily put you a metre out.
Today the sales team records the roof during the site visit, one battery, around 20 minutes. Once the order is in, project management works on with the orthophoto and the 3D model, in PV*SOL and in CAD.
“Our planning process is far more reliable now. You upload the images once and then you can do clean planning.”
Technical planner | solmotion project GmbH | Photovoltaics for homes, commercial buildings and ground-mounted sites | Drones: DJI Mini 4 Pro, DJI Mavic 3E
With Airclip we can work through more than 600 systems a year without creating chaos.
Bauplanung Kleinert is a planning office of around a dozen people working across Germany. In 2022 came the first enquiry for a structural engineer for photovoltaics on housing stock. Today the office plans those systems, does the structural work and maintains them afterwards.
Mathias Kleinert had it explained to him how a layout plan is made without a drone: on a flat roof a piece of cardboard the size of a module is laid out and moved along for hours. On a pitched roof the tiles are counted in a photo, because their width is known.
At his office two colleagues fly the buildings and the images go straight into the Airclip Cloud. Only one to two hours later the model is ready for the planners in the office.
“Being able to invite members is really good. That way our clients can work directly with the 3D model too.”
Managing director | Bauplanung Kleinert GmbH | Planning office for building applications, structural work and photovoltaics | Drones: DJI Mavic 3E
Measuring up without a drone was a real time eater
Dachdeckermeister Linde is a roofing company with 30 employees in the Braunschweig area. Everything between the customer and the roof comes together with Maximilian Linde: consulting, site management, quotation, final invoicing, running the job and measuring up.
Before the drone, roofs were measured by hand or the tiles were counted off a photo. Both took time, and neither was accurate.
What gets recorded is mostly pitched roofs, plus flat roofs, in five to ten minutes depending on the size of the building. The 3D model then sits in the viewer on the second screen, and the measurements go straight from there into the quotation software.
“I work on a second screen alongside it, so I can transfer every measurement straight into the quote.”
Master roofer | Linde Dachdeckermeister | Pitched and flat roofs in the Braunschweig area | Drones: DJI Mini 3 Pro
For cost and time, I know of nothing better
Thorsten Hill is technical head of photovoltaic planning for the whole Zewotherm group and project lead for everything drone related. The roofs, mostly on detached houses, are flown by the field sales team at the customer’s site, and they upload the images to the cloud themselves.
Before that, he received phone photos of the roof that often did not show the whole surface. He worked out the roof area and every obstruction from the visible tile size. With trapezoidal sheeting, slate or plain tiles even that no longer worked.
Today he brings the finished model into PV*SOL, designs the mounting system in K2 and writes the quote. By his own account, he is now around 80 percent faster at it than before.
“Rebuilding a roof in PV*SOL used to take me one to one and a half hours, depending on the building. Today I’m around 80 percent faster.”
Technical head of photovoltaic planning | Zewotherm OEM GmbH | Photovoltaic planning for the Zewotherm group | Drones: DJI Mini 3 Pro, DJI Mini 4 Pro
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