lordsoftonfa

Project Story: Building a Rapid 3D-Scanning App in Under Two Hours Inspiration

I wanted to see how far I could push rapid development using AI tools and available online resources. The challenge was simple: build the fastest working app I could, in under two hours, and make it do something actually useful — in this case, 3D scanning and workflow support. Basically, I wanted to test whether speed and functionality could coexist without the whole thing turning into a useless mess.

What I Learned

During this sprint, I learned how surprisingly effective AI-assisted development can be when you’re under extreme time pressure. I also got a better understanding of:

API integrations for scanning/processing

Rapid prototyping workflows

How to structure features so they don’t collapse when rushed

Managing dependencies without wasting time

The importance of keeping core features minimal and focused

Mathematically, the whole workflow felt like optimizing a function:

Time → min ⁡ while Functionality → max ⁡ Time→minwhileFunctionality→max

…except the “human error” term kept trying to explode.

How I Built the App

I used AI tools heavily to speed up coding, UI generation, and debugging. The process looked like this:

Defined the minimal app flow: open → scan → process → export.

Used AI to generate base code templates for scanning and UI.

Integrated 3D scanning libraries (existing frameworks instead of reinventing the wheel).

Linked workflows so the app could process and manage scanned data.

Cleaned up the UI enough to not look like trash.

Tested basic functionality before the two-hour mark hit.

Everything was built with the mindset of speed first, polish later.

Challenges

Even though the app got done stupidly fast, a few things fought back:

AI-generated code wasn’t always clean — I had to fix broken imports and mismatched types.

Integrating 3D scanning frameworks took longer than expected.

Some APIs had awful documentation.

The time limit made every bug feel like a punch in the face.

Performance tuning under a two-hour deadline is basically impossible.

But in the end, the app worked — rough around the edges, but functioning.

Built With

• kotlin