Backsight is the all-in-one platform for Canadian surveyors. From CAD and surfaces to photogrammetry, LiDAR, coordinates, utility locating and deliverables, do it all in one place.
All access. Includes 500 photos of drone reconstruction every month; $0.04 CAD per photo after that. Cancel anytime.
Walkthroughs, Canadian geodetics, and honest looks at the tools of the trade.
The whole path from a drone flight to deliverables, step by step, with a real 78-photo flight: upload, decide how the model is placed on the ground, process, and what comes back. No ground control points needed, and when you do want them.
· 11 min read
The six things that make CAD survey CAD, how to test a candidate on a real job before you pay, and an honest run through the options, Civil 3D, Carlson, MicroSurvey, BricsCAD and Backsight.
· 10 min read
Who should stay on Civil 3D, who is paying for far more than they use, and what the real alternatives are for survey firms, including where Backsight fits and where it doesn't.
· 9 min read
Drafting and COGO tools built for surveyors, a real command line, snaps, layers, blocks and plotting. Create, edit and manage coordinates with precision.
Explore CAD →Surfaces, contours and TINs with breaklines enforced, and exact prismatic volumes for earthworks, never grid approximations.
Explore Surfaces →Plan drone missions, manage ground control and QC the orthophotos and clouds that come back. Processing is credit-based, pay for what you run.
Explore Capture →Import point clouds, LAS, LAZ, E57, PLY, XYZ, display by classification, clip to what matters and derive ground surfaces.
Explore Point Cloud →NAD83 Original and NAD83(CSRS), UTM, 3TM and MTM, datums and projections handled explicitly, in the field or the office.
Explore Coordinates →Professional locate drawings and the traditional two-sheet report package, issued as versioned PDFs with a client portal.
Explore Locate →Replace a stack of separate tools with one unified workflow.
Transparent pricing with no hidden costs, every seat gets everything. Yearly is $990/seat, two months free.
Every capability is included, nothing is sold separately.
Bring in data from drones, LiDAR and point files.
Process imagery and clouds. Clean, classify and georeference.
Draft in CAD, build surfaces and volumes, analyze your data.
Create locate drawings, verify utilities, prepare for the field.
Produce professional plans, reports and deliverables.
Everything you need. One price per seat.
All features. All modules. Unlimited projects. Or $990/seat/year, two months free.
Month to month. Cancel anytime.
Geodesy done properly. NAD83 Original and NAD83(CSRS) are separate, deliberate selections. Heights convert through the geoid model you chose. Every calculation reports its operation, its accuracy and a reproducibility id, so any number can be traced back.
Exact numbers. Volumes are exact prismatic on the triangulation itself, no cell size to second-guess. Contours are the true intersection of the surface with level planes. Every result states the method behind it.
Records that hold up. Original imports kept byte for byte, issued reports immutable and checksummed, and a full audit trail behind everything your organization does.
Backsight is Canadian survey software that runs in the browser: CAD drafting with a command line, survey point management, TIN surfaces with exact prismatic volumes, alignments and profiles, drone photogrammetry, LiDAR point clouds and utility locate reports, one product, one subscription.
No. Backsight runs in any modern browser on Windows or Mac, the office workstation and the truck laptop open the same live project. There is no licence server and nothing to patch.
In: DXF, LandXML, CSV and delimited point files, GeoTIFF orthophotos, and point clouds in LAS, LAZ, E57, PLY and XYZ/PTS. Out: DXF, LandXML, CSV point files and plotted PDF sheets. Originals are preserved byte for byte.
Explicitly. NAD83 Original and NAD83(CSRS) are separate, deliberate selections, never silently substituted. UTM, 3TM and MTM zones are built in, heights convert through the geoid model you choose, and every calculation reports its operation, accuracy and a reproducibility id.
$99 CAD per seat per month, everything included: CAD, surfaces and volumes, drone and LiDAR, coordinates and locate reports. Pay yearly at $990 per seat and get two months free. Every seat is the same all-access plan; cancel anytime. Drone photogrammetry processing is included for 500 photos a month; after that it is $0.04 CAD per photo, quoted before every job.
It is yours. The database and file storage are in Canada. Drone photo reconstruction runs on a machine rented for that one job, currently in the United States; the photos are on it only while the job runs, it is destroyed when the job ends, and the products come back to storage in Canada. Original files are kept unmodified, every edit is audited, and you can export your drawings, points and surfaces as DXF, LandXML and CSV at any time.
Yes, APWA-coloured locate sketching with photos and details, issued as the traditional two-sheet report package: versioned, checksummed PDFs with a client portal link. Issued reports are immutable records.
Everyone signs in as themselves and works in the same live projects, no file passing, no sync. Each person is a seat on the one all-access plan, roles like administrator or surveyor control what they can do, and the audit trail records who did what. Adding or removing a teammate adjusts the next invoice automatically.
