Technology

Vertex is our bespoke development tablet and mobile app, an Android data capture application for Digital Surveyors. With Vertex, we manage images, scans and photospheres. Vertex connects with the BLK2GO LiDAR scanning device, and uploads data to our AWS cloud native architecture.

A core strength of Vertex is how it ties imagery and metadata directly to each room. Every scan, panorama and movement through the space is tagged with location-aware metadata, where it was taken, what room it belongs to, and what’s already been covered. This metadata layer is critical: it gives us a complete map of what has and hasn’t been captured, so the Digital Surveyor doesn’t leave with gaps. Vertex effectively runs a live checklist in the background, using its semantic understanding of the scene to ensure full coverage and consistent quality, even in complex layouts.

On the imagery side, Vertex is designed for clarity and consistency, not just convenience. When the Digital Surveyor captures a photosphere, Vertex doesn’t just store a single exposure, it takes multiple exposures and feeds them into a backend pipeline that fuses them into a high-dynamic-range (HDR) image. The result is a balanced, detailed image that preserves both bright highlights and deep shadows. This is especially important for darker corridors, bright windows, reflective surfaces, and mixed lighting conditions that are common in real buildings. By standardising this HDR pipeline, Vertex gives our downstream AI and our users cleaner, more trustworthy visual data to work with.

Efficiency on site is another area where Vertex shines. Because it “understands” the space in real time, it can guide the Digital Surveyor through an optimum capture path: suggesting where to place the next scan or photosphere, reducing redundant passes, and helping avoid missed corners or hidden zones. This guided workflow shortens time on site and reduces cognitive load for the surveyor, while improving consistency across different operators and projects. Whether it’s a small flat or a complex commercial building, Vertex is continually optimising how data is gathered.

All of this intelligence is wrapped in a pipeline that’s engineered for speed and reliability. As capture progresses, data is comprehensively compressed and packaged in a way that preserves its structure,, rooms, metadata, images, point clouds, and then uploaded securely to the cloud.

By the time it arrives, it’s already neatly organised for our AI engine to process: cleaning point clouds, extracting geometry, running measurements and generating floorplan drafts. From there, Dimensions takes over as the visual workspace for editing, QA and delivery.

AI-powered technology integrates LiDAR hardware and proprietary software to create precise digital assets from spatial data. Key innovations include 3D point cloud storage, semantic segmentation, automatic measurement adherence, and 2D/3D fusion, delivering accurate, standardised, and detailed interior models.

Every DRC project starts in the field: Using Vertex, our bespoke  mobile app connected to a LiDAR sensor captures millions of raw depth points and high-resolution images as our Digital Surveyors walk the space. As soon as the scan is uploaded, our cloud-based AI Engine takes over.

This is where the heavy lifting happens.

Using advanced computer vision and semantic segmentation, the AI Engine analyses every point and pixel to work out what it’s actually looking at. It automatically distinguishes walls from doors, glazing from solid structure, floors from ceilings, columns, stairs, lifts, bathrooms and more -  even in busy, furnished spaces.
The AI Engine produces a clean, labelled model of the building where each part of the scene is tagged with what it is and how it relates to the rest of the space.

That understanding powers:

• Highly accurate measurements and area calculations (e.g. GIA / NIA / IPMS)
• Reliable detection of rooms, boundaries and circulation
• Rich, editable geometry that’s ready for production

The AI Engine also cleans and corrects. It filters noise, manages reflections from glass and mirrors, copes with people and clutter, and can infer missing edges or surfaces where data is thin. The result is geometry that is both faithful to reality and robust enough for valuation, design and asset management.

Once this processing is complete, the structured data flows into Dimensions, where it’s visualised, checked and annotated to create Measured Building Survey floorplans, Scan-to-Cad, Scan-to-BIM aids and digital twins.

In Dimensions, our point cloud and floorplan editing tool, we annotate our point cloud data for creating area calculations, and generate floor plans. Measurements are verified in Dimensions version control.  We also build our annotated spatial dataset in Dimensions, used for automating with machine learning later. Dimensions also supports 3D and digital twins data.

Dimensions is Digital Reality Corp’s production engine:  The technology turns raw reality capture into the trusted digital assets behind every Stak by Digital Reality Corp deliverable. It ingests 3D LiDAR point clouds, high fidelity imagery and key geometry data from our captures and automatically reconstructs the interior, measures it and prepares it for downstream use in Scan-to-CAD, Scan-to-BIM and Measured Building Survey.

Behind the scenes, Dimensions connects directly to DRC’s AI Engine (a suite of advanced computer-vision, geometry-processing and machine-learning models). As Dimensions ingests raw point-clouds and imagery, it continuously pulls intelligence from these AI pipelines to clean, structure and interpret every millimetre of captured space. The AI Engine resolves reflections, identifies boundaries, infers room shapes, and produces measurement-ready geometry that Dimensions then transforms into accurate digital assets.

Noise, reflections and moving objects are removed; point clouds are aligned together; outlines and walls are detected; and areas are computed to commercial standards such as GIA, NIA and IPMS. These pipelines are monitored with strict quality controls so that the assets we deliver are accurate enough to support valuations, leasing, development and compliance across large portfolios.

FROM A SINGLE VISIT, DIMENSIONS CAN GENERATE:

• Verified measurement data that underpins DRC’s Verified® floor plans, reports and summaries.
• Production-ready 2D drawings for architects, surveyors and engineers.
• High-quality imagery and digital twins for key insights and asset documentation.

Because Dimensions is built for scale, it can handle everything from single offices to nationwide portfolios, giving agencies, valuers, asset managers and occupiers a consistent, measurable view of their space. This automation dramatically reduces manual drafting time while preserving expert oversight, allowing our teams to focus on edge cases and complex assets rather than repetitive tasks.

Task management application for Digital Surveyors.

DP Dashboard (DP Dash) is our internal Digital Producer portal, the command centre where every capture, task and asset moves through production in a controlled, auditable way. It’s built so our production team can manage high volumes of work without losing accuracy, context or speed.

At its core, DP Dashboard is a task management application for our Digital Surveyors and production team, designed around the reality of day-to-day DRC operations. It brings together scheduling, task assignment, status tracking and quality checks in one place, giving a real-time view of what’s in capture, what’s in processing, and what’s ready to deliver. The Scheduler component provides a bird’s-eye view of the day’s captures and orders, so updates and reallocations can be made in seconds to keep the operation flowing smoothly.

Every DRC job is broken down into structured tasks – from initial capture and upload, through AI processing, production in Dimensions, QA, and final packaging into DRC’s Stak Hub deliverables. DP Dashboard tracks each of these steps, who owns them, and how they’re progressing. This means our leads can see at a glance which captures are on track, which are waiting on inputs, and where we may need to intervene before a deadline or SLA is at risk.

A big focus of DP Dashboard is scalable quality management. Each task type carries embedded checklists and rules that reflect our standards – for example, confirming coverage, verifying measurements, or validating that all required assets (floorplans, SOAs, imagery, Revit/CAD files) have been generated and attached. Where our AI pipelines and automation produce outputs, DP Dashboard captures their status and any error signals, so the team can quickly identify and resolve exceptions rather than hunting through logs.

Because everything is centralised, DP Dashboard becomes the single source of truth for production:

• every capture and property is linked to its tasks and owners
• every status change is recorded for auditability
• every failure or rework is visible and can be analysed for process improvement

Over time, this data allows us to see patterns, bottlenecks in the workflow, recurring failure modes, or capacity constraints, so we can optimise staffing, automation and SLAs while maintaining accuracy at scale.

DRC’s Stak Hub is our platform where customers can create or cancel an order and retrieve their assets.
The customer receives a Stak Digital Brochure for every order, which enables anyone to share a property's photographs, location and virtual tour with a single, convenient link.

Stak Hub is the front door to everything Stak produces, portfolio-wide control panel for assets, projects, insights and delivery.

Where Vertex and Dimensions handle capture and production, Stak Hub is where it all comes together for clients. Every Stak deliverable - Verified floor plans with GIA/NIA/IPMS, CAD drawings, Revit models, Summary of Areas reports, professional photography, digital brochure pages and virtual tours – is surfaced in one place, with all properties in a consolidated view via DRC’s Stak Hub. Instead of hunting through folders, email threads or FTP links, your team logs into a single portal and can immediately see the full portfolio and the status of every project.

At the heart of Stak Hub is a structured asset library. Each property carries a unique identifier, address, client references and key metadata (capture date, surveyor, standard used, floor count, area summaries). Against that property, Stak Hub organises all associated outputs: PDFs, DWGs, RVTs, SOA reports, imagery and any additional 3D assets. Because these assets are generated from our AI + Dimensions pipeline, they arrive in the Hub already versioned and labelled, so users always know which file is current and which is superseded.

Stak Hub is also where project lifecycle management lives. Orders raised with Stak flow through to the portal, giving your team live visibility of what’s in capture, in production and completed. Operationally, Stak Hub is designed to support instant changes, users can request updates, trigger new instructions, and (where enabled) create or cancel orders and retrieve their assets from the same interface. For large enterprise clients, this becomes the operational backbone: a consistent way to interact with Stak by Digital Reality Corp across markets, buildings and service lines, with the comfort that all outputs are delivered in a standardised format.

On top of simple file access, Stak Hub unlocks portfolio-level insights and analytics. Because every project carries structured measurement and classification data from our AI engine, the Hub can roll this up across your estate. You can filter and slice by client, region, asset type, instruction type or status; quickly surface all buildings above or below a certain GIA; compare NIA efficiencies across a portfolio; or pull down area and asset summaries without opening a single drawing. Over time, this becomes a spatial dataset you can query, not just a file archive you browse.

From a technical standpoint, Stak Hub is built as a secure, cloud-native portal. Role-based access controls ensure the right people see the right projects; audit trails track when assets are generated, updated or downloaded; and the platform is designed to integrate with your existing systems via APIs where needed (for example, linking property IDs or pushing links into internal deal rooms).

Because DRC’s Stak Hub sits downstream of Vertex, AI and Dimensions, it inherits their metadata and structure, which is why we can present a consistent, analytics-ready view across thousands of assets with minimal manual admin.