RoomPlan/LiDAR best practices for scanning ~3,000 sq ft: Single scan, segmented scans, or based on scanned area?

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I have a few questions about the recommended approach:

Should a large area like this be scanned in a single RoomCaptureSession, or is it recommended to split it into multiple sessions? If multiple sessions are preferred, should the decision be based on the device's available RAM/memory or the size of the scanned area (square footage)? Is there a recommended maximum square footage, number of rooms, or session duration for a single RoomCaptureSession? Are there any documented limitations or best practices for handling large-area scans with RoomPlan?

I'm looking for the recommended approach from the RoomPlan/ARKit developer for managing large scans efficiently.

Answer 1

Vision Pro Engineer OP

Apple

11h

Hi @Ramneet

Use multiple scans rather than one large one.

Create parametric 3D room scans with RoomPlan frames RoomPlan around one room up to about 30 × 30 ft (~900 sq ft) and advises against scans over 5 minutes. Explore enhancements to RoomPlan puts multi-room scan-and-merge at about 2,000 sq ft total. You're above both.

Subdividing one continuous open space isn't a documented use case though; merging is built around discrete rooms.

There's no memory-based guidance, so size passes by area rather than RAM, keeping each within those figures.

For the segmented workflow, follow Scanning the rooms of a single structure. Passes only merge if they share a coordinate space, which means one uninterrupted AR session. Recover a tracking loss by returning true from sessionShouldAttemptRelocalization(_:); if the app backgrounds or restarts, the session is gone and you'll need a saved ARWorldMap to restore the prior coordinate space.

Handle errors at both stages: RoomCaptureSession.CaptureError during capture, especially exceedSceneSizeLimit and deviceTooHot across repeated passes, and StructureBuilder.BuildError on merge.

If you can't achieve your goal with the existing APIs please use Feedback Assistant to submit an enhancement request.