so ive been doing roofing estimates for about 8 years and my buddy keeps telling me to just get a drone and stop climbing up on sketchy roofs for prelim assessments. i finally pulled the trigger and got a mavic 3 enterprise a few months ago and honestly i have mixed feelings.

the camera is obviously incredible and i can see stuff i would have missed from a ladder, like flashing issues around chimneys and soft spots you can kind of tell by the way shingles are sitting. but the actual workflow is what's killing me ? i'm using pix4d for the orthomosaics and it takes forever to process and then i still have to manually go through the photos anyway. so like where's the time savings exactly.

the other thing is liability. had a homeowner ask me if my drone footage would hold up if there was a dispute with the insurance company and i genuinely had no idea what to say. anyone else doing roofing inspections professionally and figured out a good workflow that doesn't require a computer science degree

ditch pix4d for roofing unless you're doing full photogrammetry reports for insurance or legal. for regular estimates i just do a manual orbit and a nadir grid pass at like 30-40ft and review footage same day on my laptop. takes maybe 20 mins total for an average residential roof. the stitched ortho is overkill 90% of the time honestly, you're not mapping a construction site.

for the liability thing, i'd talk to your insurance broker. some E&O policies cover drone-assisted inspections and some explicitly dont. i had to get a rider added to mine which was surprisingly cheap.

we use a skydio 2+ for roofing at the company i work at and the autonomous obstacle avoidance is really nice around chimneys and antenna masts but the image quality compared to the mavic 3 is kind of a step down if im honest. depends what you prioritize i guess. also does your mavic have the thermal camera option? that's the thing that actually changed everything for us, you can see moisture intrusion that looks completely fine in RGB