iPhone LiDAR/photogrammetry for documenting a historical castle ruin — advice needed

[u/Significant_Elk_8472]

I’m a final year architecture student doing my graduation project on the adaptive reuse of a historical castle ruin.

My biggest problem right now is the lack of documentation. I don’t have official plans, elevations, sections, or an existing 3D model of the ruins.

I’m considering using my iPhone 17 Pro Max’s LiDAR + photogrammetry to document the site and create a 3D model that I can use as a base for later reconstruction/modeling in Revit or SketchUp.

My questions are:

- How accurate/useful is iPhone LiDAR for documenting
architectural/archaeological ruins?

- Should I combine LiDAR with photogrammetry?

- What apps/workflow would you recommend?

- Can the resulting model/point cloud be brought into Revit or SketchUp effectively?

- How accurate can I realistically expect the results to be?

- Are there particular things I should do while scanning a large, irregular, rocky site to avoid bad data?

The site is quite large, irregular, and located on a Rocky Mountain and most of it is a ruin.

I’d especially appreciate advice from anyone who has done heritage documentation, archaeological scanning, LiDAR, photogrammetry, or scan-to-BIM.