As designers and architects, we enjoy an unusual amount of luck – we love what we do. Why waste our time eating, sleeping, or having fun when we can visualize, sketch, and create?

If you are familiar with this kind of obsessive creativity, you’ll find these mobile apps for visual artists to be valuable and fun. Enjoy them anytime, anywhere.

BIMx

As advertised, BIMx is a powerful project presentation and collaboration tool. Yet, coordination is the most intuitive and attractive capability that separates BIMx from a host of similar apps.

Being designed for handheld devices and connected to the cloud, it allows for effortless, real-time coordination between a design studio, client’s office, and construction site.

Some of BIMx’s best features include game-like navigation and Hyper-models. Both of these capabilities ensure easy access to everyone involved.

Intuitive navigation requires no technical training, helping bridge the gap between architects and clients, while Hyper-models make vital documentation available on the go. As a cherry on top, BIMx is also fun to use.

SketchUp Mobile

SketchUp is a beloved industry staple with simple but high-quality tools for building 3D models from scratch.

SketchUp Viewer for Mobile, as its name suggests, is a mobile version of a popular toolkit, only without the tools. It’s a shame you can’t use SketchUp Mobile for building, but it’s great having another fantastic presentation viewer on hand.

SketchUp’s Viewer is pretty straightforward. With no particular star features (other than AR model viewing capabilities), the app allows you to open and review the most complex models whenever you need them and wherever you are. The AR mode, which is so cool that it lets you jump inside the model, works only on AR-enabled mobile devices.

RoomScan Pro

RoomScan Pro is both a time-saver and a creativity booster. Designed by designers for designers, this feature-rich app allows you to take literal scans of any room and turn them into a floorplan.

The tool leverages Bluetooth for that, making measurements 100% accurate. If you must draw the floor plan yourself, RoomScan Pro also helps you do that.

In addition to interiors, you can also scan the exteriors, yards, and gardens using the ExteriorScan and PlotScan features. If you have an Apple Pencil, you can use it to annotate your plans.

FLYPLAN is another cool feature developed for RoomScan Pro. It allows you to integrate 3D models into your floor plans and create engaging visualizations that clients love.

ArchiSnapper

We’re not sure we can call ArchiSnapper fun, but it is practical and super-convenient. After all, it is a report-building tool made for project management.

It is supposed to help busy architects, contractors, and engineers keep their data neat and organized. That includes everything from field reports to on-site punch lists and checklists.

To give you a sneak peek of what ArchiSnapper can do, one of the many on-site reporting features allows you to snap a photo while inspecting a site and make notes using a pencil or voice-to-text.

You can also convert paper checklists into inspection forms and generate branded PDF reports while commuting back to work. AchiSnapper is a huge time-saver.

ArchiMaps

ArchiMaps is a mobile database that shows prominent buildings on the world map. It currently counts more than 2,000 works, seven cities, and seven famed artists.

Made by schooled architects and architectural historians, ArchiMaps helps popularize architecture through interactive content and serves as a handy travel tool for architecture buffs.

The creators of ArchiMaps are incredibly proud of their content’s credibility. They use only credited and reputable sources, having envisioned the app as an encyclopedia of sorts. They also avoid picking favorites, making ArchiMaps a reliable, comprehensive well of classic and modern architectural knowledge.

DroneDeploy

DroneDeploy is an app for serious architects, builders, and investors. However, that doesn’t stop it from being fun.

It’s a construction site monitoring app, but it is also a mobile remote for drones. Both on the ground and in the air, DroneDeploy is one of the most powerful, versatile, and downright practical apps for us architects to play with and contextualize data visually.

Feature-wise, DroneDeploy offers an on-hand toolkit for building maps, 3D models, panoramas, and videos with integrated camera and drone footage. You can create aerial plans or stick to the ground for continuous 360-degree walkthrough views.

Thanks to Live Maps, the app lets you document, monitor, and visualize projects in real-time.

MagicPlan

Sketching, reporting, estimating – MagicPlan is a three-in-one app that “every contractor loves.” That is probably indisputably true, given their projects’ scopes, schedules, and intricacies.

MagicPlan seamlessly integrates all three aspects of this business into an intuitive app that allows you to keep all the floor plans and reports in your pocket.

Think about MagicPlan as your notepad, only cleaner, more accurate, and infinitely more reliable. It comes with tools for measuring and sketching interior plans in 2D and 3D, robust reporting features that let you add photos, 360-degree images, and notes, and estimating capabilities that enable you to do the math on-the-spot, during your first visit.

Concepts

Marketed as a “sketchbook on steroids,” Concepts is a fantastic app that inspires gorgeous art. The free version alone offers an infinite canvas, a library of brushes, and a whole set of five layers for complete artistic freedom. It’s powered by the state-of-the-art hybrid vector-rester Fluid Engine and ensures 64-bit precision with multi-threaded rendering.

It’s needless to say that Concepts has built-in project development and management solutions that allow side-by-side comparisons of different phases of the same project. Team collaboration is available in the paid “Everything” plan, too.

All in all, anything you can imagine as an architect or designer, you can bring to life using the Concepts mobile app.

Conclusion

How to choose the best mobile app for you? It’s simple – try them all and decide which one you like best. We’ve tried to include as many mobile apps for different design and architecture-related projects, so think about what you need, too. Each in its unique way, they are all a perfect combination of fun and work.