Apex Software has partnered with companies to build integrated area calculation software solutions for over 20 years. Leica Geosystems develops, manufactures and markets systems for surveying, mapping, position determination and laser distance measuring. The two companies partnered to develop the DISTO™ plus laser meter with Bluetooth™ technology and PlusDraw™ software for mobile area calculations on a Pocket PC.

Apex Software and Leica Geosystems worked for over twelve months simultaneously developing the DISTO hardware and the PlusDraw software to provide area valuation professionals with the tools to automatically measure, calculate and draw areas.

Before the introduction of the DISTO Plus and PlusDraw, users measured in the field with a DISTO Classic laser meter and then transferred the dimensions by hand to graph paper on a clipboard or into Pocket Apex, Apex’s Pocket PC sketch application. The new technologies not only saves tremendous time, but it also ensures area calculation and sketch accuracies before a field measurer leaves the site.

This revolutionary product is one of the first applications successfully deploying Bluetooth for the mobile workforce. Bluetooth popularity has thus far been largely attributed to cell phone communications, printing and handheld computer synchronization. The release of the DISTO Plus and PlusDraw is the first industry-specific application developed with significant business impact.