This would be an excellent Planning Tool for large scale factories. Even with what is available to us today, (Example:
https://www.sensefly.com/drone/ebee-mapping-drone/ ) you can do a plethora of things pre and post completion.
Being able to get a 3D Scan of the entirety of the area would allow you to create a Fog of War that the player has to manually scan. They can then pick out resources, enemies, points of interest, etc from the data gathered. Depending upon the flight path you would only see one side of a mountain. Depending upon elevation you may miss caves.
You could turn the map into your Level Editor. However, anything the player adds becomes a HUD Item that they can snap to in the real world, and as an added bonus for pre-planning the area, you could even auto-level structures, with a foundation underneath and allow concrete to be auto-deducted to make sidewalks for easy travel throughout your Factory.
You could also plan easements for where your Utilities will run. This would be highlighted on your HUD to easily guide long runs of utilities.
Adding the ability to Snap to a grid, and rotate to specific Degrees, or say Parallel or Perpendicular to another object.
Essentially; Architects, Engineers, Surveyors, & Geographic Information Science fields have a vast array of tools at their disposal that would synergize well with this game.
