What a drone survey adds
A current drone survey can replace older remote imagery with a site-specific orthophoto and measured surface model. Powerlily processes the flight inside the project, then makes the result available to the design workspace.
The orthophoto provides a corrected top-down image for tracing visible site features. The surface model provides elevation data for interpreting roof planes, ridges, pitch, height changes, and obstructions.
Before you fly
Confirm that drone capture is available for your company and that the project has a valid address and map location. Drone capture is a staff workflow and access can depend on your plan and permissions.
- Follow all aviation rules, site rules, privacy requirements, and company procedures that apply to the flight.
- Confirm the project address and map pin before selecting a flight folder.
- Plan coverage for the roof, additions, obstructions, nearby trees, and other site context needed for the final design.
- Use a repeatable grid or orbit with strong image overlap.
- Keep the original camera files. Re-exported images can lose the GPS information needed for reconstruction.
Choose an upload format
Powerlily accepts several practical capture formats:
- GPS-tagged photos: Upload the original JPEG, PNG, or TIFF images as files or a selected folder.
- Zip archive: Upload an archive containing the original geotagged capture. Powerlily cannot inspect the archive before upload, so preflight checks are limited.
- DJI video and SRT: Upload the video with its matching SRT telemetry file. The base filenames must match.
- Original DJI video: Where supported, Powerlily can attempt to extract embedded flight telemetry when no external SRT is supplied.
Still photos normally produce a finer surface than video frames. Use a photo mission when final geometric detail is important.
Prepare a photo set
A photo reconstruction requires at least 40 images and supports up to 1,500 in one job. For one property, a typical mission is around 150 to 250 photos. Coverage and overlap matter more than the count alone, so aim for approximately 70 to 80 percent overlap.
Powerlily samples the selected images for GPS coordinates and checks whether the capture is reasonably close to the project. A missing GPS position, mixed exported files, or a flight far from the project address will stop the upload before processing time is spent.
Open Drone Capture
- Open the quote or project you want to survey.
- Open the design tool and choose the imagery controls.
- In the Drone Capture area, select Open drone capture.
- Choose or drag in the flight files.
- Review the preflight summary, warnings, estimated processing time, file count, and GPS result.
If the Drone Capture option is not shown, ask an administrator to confirm your plan, permissions, and whether drone processing is configured for the workspace.
Upload the flight
Start the upload only after the correct files pass the available checks. Large photo sets upload directly and can take time on a limited connection. Keep the page open until the upload completes.
Individual photo uploads can retry failed files. A large zip is a single transfer, so a dropped connection may require the entire archive to start again. Selecting the original photo folder is often more resilient than uploading one very large archive.
Wait for processing
After upload, Powerlily reconstructs the flight in the cloud. Processing commonly takes 20 to 90 minutes, depending on the source and flight. You can leave the page after Powerlily confirms that the upload is complete. The system reports progress and sends an email when the result is ready.
The resulting capture can include a current orthophoto, a digital surface model or point cloud, terrain data, and quality evidence. Processing time and achievable detail depend on capture quality.
Review the result
Open the completed capture and inspect it before applying it. Check that:
- The reconstructed property matches the project address.
- The roof and important site features are fully covered.
- The orthophoto is aligned and visually coherent.
- The surface contains the roof areas and obstructions needed for design.
- There are no large gaps, distortions, or obvious height errors in critical areas.
Treat the reconstruction as design evidence, not as a substitute for professional judgment or required field verification.
Apply the capture carefully
Applying a drone capture replaces the project imagery and clears the current panel layout. Existing arrays must be laid out again because the new orthophoto can use a different position, scale, and resolution.
- Confirm that any existing layout can be recreated.
- Review and save any information you need from the current design.
- Select Apply for the usable capture.
- Accept the replacement warning.
- Return to the design workspace and verify the new imagery and measured surface.
- Rebuild or refine roofs, obstructions, setbacks, and panel arrays on the updated site data.
The customer, quote, documents, and downstream project workflow remain in place. The imagery and design scene are the parts that change.
Continue the design
Use the applied survey to refine roof geometry and the final layout. Review ridges, planes, pitch, height changes, obstructions, pathways, and surrounding shade context. Recalculate production and verify the updated design before using it in proposals, engineering documents, single-line diagrams, plan sets, or field handoff.
Troubleshooting
The photos have no GPS position
Upload the original files from the aircraft or camera. Copies exported through editing or messaging software may have lost their location metadata.
The selected flight appears to be at another site
Confirm the project address and map pin, then select the correct flight folder. Powerlily warns when sampled coordinates are far from the project.
There are too few photos
Use at least 40 GPS-tagged images. If the set is below the usual recommendation, processing may still work for a small simple roof, but weak overlap can cause reconstruction to fail.
A video and SRT do not match
Choose the telemetry file created with that video and confirm their base filenames are identical. If the original DJI recording contains embedded telemetry, remove an unmatched SRT and use the supported extraction path.
Processing failed
Open the capture to review the failure message and any available quality or diagnostic information. If the capture can be reprocessed, Powerlily can reuse the retained upload. Otherwise, correct the capture problem and upload a new flight.
The Apply action is unavailable
Only a completed, usable capture can be applied. Confirm that processing finished successfully and that your account has staff access to manage the project.
Related guides
- Designing Your First System in 2D and 3D
- Working with Roofs, Arrays, Setbacks, and Obstructions
- Production, Shading, and System Results
- Generating Single-Line Diagrams and Plan Sets
- Using Lilypad for Field Execution
