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Design Services › Drone Imagery & LiDAR Scanning
Site Intelligence

Precise site data, captured from the air.

Daydream uses FAA-certified drone flights, RTK positioning, and LiDAR-grade processing to capture your property in exact, real-world coordinates. It is the accurate foundation every good design and every tight stone cut depends on.

Centimeter
RTK positioning accuracy
FAA Part 107
Certified remote pilot
One Flight
Thousands of measured points
Why It Matters

A design is only as accurate as the site data under it.

Most outdoor projects start from a rough sketch and a tape measure. That is where the errors begin: a grade read wrong, a tree in the wrong place, a slope nobody measured. Those small inaccuracies compound into change orders, drainage problems, and stone that does not fit.

We start from measured reality instead. A drone flight with RTK positioning captures your entire property in centimeter-level, real-world coordinates, producing a dense, accurate model of the ground, structures, trees, and grade. Every design decision after that stands on real data, not a guess. For cut-to-size stone especially, that precision is the difference between pieces that drop into place and pieces that have to be fought.

What We Capture

A complete, measured picture of your site.

One flight produces a rich dataset that feeds the entire design process, from base map to final fabrication.

High-Resolution Orthomosaic

A crisp, measurable aerial map of the whole property, stitched from hundreds of overlapping images and corrected to real-world scale.

Topography & Contours

Accurate elevation and contour data across the site, so grade, slope, and drainage are understood before design begins.

3D Point Cloud & Mesh

A dense point cloud and 3D model of the ground, structures, and features, the base layer for design and fabrication.

Existing Conditions

Precise positions of structures, hardscape, trees, and utilities as they actually sit, not as a plan assumes.

Orthomosaic maps Digital elevation models Contour lines Point clouds 3D meshes Volume measurements Georeferenced imagery
The Workflow

Professional-grade capture, ground-truthed and processed.

This is not a hobby drone and a phone app. It is a survey-grade workflow built for accuracy you can design and fabricate from.

01

RTK Aerial Capture

A DJI Mavic 3 Enterprise with RTK flies a planned grid, capturing overlapping imagery tagged with centimeter-level positions.

02

Ground Control

Emlid RS3 and RS4 GNSS receivers set and check ground control points, tying the whole model to true coordinates.

03

Photogrammetry Processing

Imagery is processed in Pix4D and OpenDroneMap into orthomosaics, elevation models, point clouds, and 3D meshes.

04

Design-Ready Base Map

The processed data becomes the accurate base map every plan, visualization, and stone cut is built from.

Who It Serves

For our own builds, and for other professionals.

We capture sites for our own design-build projects, and we provide site capture as a standalone service to builders, landscape architects, and design professionals who need accurate, real-world site data to work from. You get the processed deliverables in the formats your workflow uses, without buying the equipment or the certification to fly it.

FAA Part 107 Remote Pilot certification seal

Flown by an FAA Part 107 certified remote pilot.

Commercial drone flight requires FAA Part 107 certification. Daydream founder Jesse House holds it, so every flight is legal, insured, and done right. View all credentials

Common Questions

Drone and LiDAR site capture, answered.

How accurate is drone site capture?
With RTK positioning and verified ground control points, the model is accurate to the centimeter level in real-world coordinates. That is precise enough to design grading and drainage from and to fabricate cut-to-size stone against.
Is this the same as a licensed land survey?
No. A boundary survey establishing legal property lines must be performed by a licensed land surveyor, and we coordinate one when a project requires it. Our drone capture produces highly accurate topographic and existing-conditions data for design and construction, and it works alongside a surveyor's boundary information.
What do I actually receive?
Depending on your needs: a high-resolution orthomosaic, a digital elevation model with contours, a 3D point cloud and mesh, and georeferenced imagery, delivered in standard formats your design software can use.
Can you capture a site you are not building?
Yes. We provide standalone site capture for builders, landscape architects, and other professionals who need accurate site data without doing the flying and processing themselves.
How long does it take?
The flight itself is usually a single visit. Processing the imagery into finished deliverables typically takes a few days, depending on site size and the outputs you need.

Start your project from real data.

Whether it is your build or a project you are documenting, accurate site capture is where it should begin. Tell us about the property and we will scope the flight.

Request a Site Capture