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Forge software platform uses iPad LiDAR scanning for quick solar design proposals

By Kelly Pickerel | April 15, 2026

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Software company Dominus Foundry has launched Forge, a vertical SaaS platform that combines real-time LiDAR scanning with live proposal generation for commercial roofing contractors, with a dedicated solar vertical rolling out later this year. Powered by the company’s patent-pending Hyperion spatial intelligence engine — backed by a portfolio of 16+ provisional patent filings — Forge replaces the fragmented workflow of aerial imagery, separate estimating tools and office-side proposal software with a single end-to-end platform that runs on standard iPad and iPhone hardware.

A demo of the Forge software

Unlike existing solar design tools — which rely on pre-captured aerial LiDAR from government databases or photogrammetric models derived from airplane imagery that can be months to years old — Forge captures ground-truth geometry at the point of sale using the built-in LiDAR sensor on an iPad or iPhone. The entire pipeline, from spatial capture to signed proposal, lives in a single platform.

“The solar industry has been fighting soft-cost pressure for a decade, and one of the biggest hidden costs is the gap between site visit and signed contract,” said Bri Lord, co-founder of Dominus Foundry. “Every day a proposal sits in someone’s inbox is a day the customer is shopping around. Forge was built to close that gap completely — a salesperson can walk the site, capture the roof, generate measurements and a bill of materials, and hand the customer a proposal before leaving the driveway.”

Forge went live on April 8, 2026, with its first commercial customer, All Weather Roofing in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Forge’s commercial roofing vertical is shipping now. A dedicated commercial solar vertical — extending the same on-device LiDAR pipeline into array layout, shading analysis and solar-specific bill of materials — is on the product roadmap for later in 2026, followed by an AV/security vertical.

Dominus Foundry said it is not aware of another tool in the roofing or solar space that combines on-device LiDAR capture, design intelligence and live proposal generation in a single end-to-end workflow. The closest alternatives either scan without design intelligence or design without real-time spatial data.

“The vast majority of commercial contractors are still running real operations on spreadsheets, texts and memory,” said Mark Lord, founder of Dominus Foundry. “We built Forge for the crews who want to scale but have been locked out of the tools built for enterprise. Roofing contractors are telling us the same story solar contractors have been telling for years — they’re tired of exporting point clouds between disconnected systems just to get to a proposal.”

News item from Dominus Foundry

About The Author

Kelly Pickerel

Kelly Pickerel has more than 15 years of experience reporting on the U.S. solar industry and is currently editor in chief of Solar Power World. Email Kelly.

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