Flight area estimator

Know the size of the job before you fly it.

Swathwise is a map you draw on. Outline the survey area, pick the aircraft and the sensor, and it tells you how many square miles that is, how long it takes to fly, and how many battery sets to pack.

A flight area covered by parallel flight lines An irregular survey boundary crossed by eleven evenly spaced flight lines. A wide band along each line shows the ground the sensor scans; neighbouring bands overlap slightly.
Flight lines spaced from the sensor's real swath width and the side overlap you ask for.

What it tells you

Square miles
The true area inside the boundary, per block and for the whole job.
Flight time
Every flight line and every turn, at the speed and altitude you set.
Battery sets
How many swaps the job takes, at the site’s elevation and the reserve you land with.

How it works

  1. Draw the area, or import it

    Sketch the flight area on the map, or drop in the boundary the client sent as KMZ, KML or GeoJSON. One job can hold several blocks.

  2. Pick the aircraft and the sensor

    Choose the drone and the LiDAR unit or camera. Line spacing comes from that sensor’s actual swath and the side overlap you want, not from a rule of thumb.

  3. Read the numbers

    Area, flight time, distance and battery sets update as you change altitude, speed or overlap, so you can see what a tighter spec costs before you quote it.

  4. Take it with you

    Export the estimate as a spreadsheet, the boundaries as GeoJSON, a one-page field sheet, and draft flight routes as DJI route files named for each block.

Nothing to sign up for, nothing phoning home

The planner runs entirely in your browser. There is no account, no API key and no AI in the loop — the same inputs give the same answer every time. The only things it fetches are map tiles, place-name search and the ground elevation of the site. Your boundaries stay on your machine.

It plans LiDAR and photogrammetry jobs, and also runs as a Windows desktop program that files every export into a folder per project.

Where it is up to

Swathwise is in working use on real survey jobs. There is no public copy to try yet.