Contour support

Contour measures a space with your phone, and tells you how much to trust the numbers.

Before anything else

What Contour needs

Room scans, mesh captures and object captures need a device with a LiDAR scanner — the iPhone Pro models and the iPad Pro. Measuring point-to-point works on any device that supports ARKit. Contour tells you which modes your device can run before you scan anything, on the first screen and again in Settings.

You don't need to scan anything to try it

Tap Try a Sample Project on the first screen. It loads a complete project with real geometry — a two-room plan, a re-scanned utility room, an uneven driveway, an armchair, an imported bracket — and every feature in the app works from it. It deletes like any other project when you're done.

The thing that makes it different

Why does it say the scale is unchecked?

Because it is. Every scanning app claims accuracy; none of them can know it without something that doesn't drift to check against. Measure one wall with a tape, enter it under Accuracy → Check Against a Tape, and Contour works out its own scale error and reports it — 1% long means a 4 m wall is really 4.04 m. Until you do that, it says so rather than quietly implying it was right.

Two references, not one

One measurement tells Contour there might be an error. Two tell it whether that error is consistent — which is the difference between a scale it can correct for and two measurements that simply disagree. If your references disagree by more than a scan drifts, Contour says that too, and doesn't pick a winner.

"Read confidently 71%" — what is that?

The LiDAR sensor grades every depth reading it takes. Glass, gloss, dark surfaces and anything much past five metres come back weak. That's a different question from scale error: it's whether the sensor could see the surface at all. Contour keeps those grades and points at the specific patches it struggled with, so you know which measurements to check by hand.

Going back for the weak patches

Scan the space again with Extend Scan and Contour points you at the spots it read badly last time, counting them down as you re-read them. It only starts once the app has recognised the earlier scan — until then it doesn't know where those spots are, so it stays quiet rather than pointing you somewhere wrong.

Getting a good scan

Walk slowly

It is the single biggest thing that improves a scan, and the one people get wrong. Contour records how much of a capture was tracked properly and tells you afterwards what went wrong, so you can see the difference it made.

Cover it from more than one angle

The compass ring during a mesh capture shows which directions are thin. A surface seen from one angle only comes out thin or missing.

Light helps, glass doesn't

The scanner needs texture to lock onto. Blank white walls, mirrors, windows and very dark rooms are all hard for it, and Contour will tell you when they were the problem rather than leaving you to guess.

Plans, exports and printing

My mesh capture has no floor plan

Contour works a plan out of a mesh capture's own shape — walls, floor, ceiling, openings — which is how lofts, garages and anything with a sloped ceiling get a plan at all. If too little of the capture sits on flat surfaces, it says so rather than drawing a room that isn't there. A driveway or a scanned object won't produce one, and shouldn't.

A plan derived this way is a fit, not a drawing. It says so wherever it appears, and reports how much of the capture actually sits on the surfaces it drew.

Which file format do I want?

3MF for 3D printing — it's the one that can't be mis-scaled. STL if your slicer insists. DXF for CAD. PLY for scan-processing tools, and the one that carries the captured colour. USDZ for AR Quick Look. PDF or the self-contained web page for anyone who just needs to read it.

It won't give me a volume or a weight

A volume needs a surface that encloses one. A scan of a room or an object open at the back doesn't, so Contour declines rather than reporting a number that means nothing. Filling small holes or adding a flat base in the print sheet will often close it.

Sync and backup

Turning sync on

Sync goes through your own iCloud account and is on by default. If you're not signed into iCloud, or you turn it off, everything stays on the device and nothing is lost. Turning it back off moves your files back out of iCloud rather than stranding them there.

Moving a whole project somewhere else

Export a Project Archive. It carries everything — scans, room data, photos, measurements, notes — in one file that Contour can open again, including from AirDrop, Mail or Files.

Still stuck?

Write me at ethan@kuhlman-co.com. Telling me what device you're on and what you were scanning saves a round trip.

Last updated August 26, 2026.