Hi,
I work for a FAA repair station and we refurbish the interior, mainly the seat covers. I have a 3d scanner ( artech Eva) that I use for pretty much everything. For example I 3d scan the seat, process the data and then import a pointcloud to SW and use the mesh prep wiz. I use the curve wiz after than to get my section profiles and then start surfacing from there. Once I have a good surface model I take that into a SW plugin called exactflat, then that is what I use to flatten the surfaces and get my seat patterns.
My current workflow sucks due to SW, I have to decimate my meshes down to a iphone quality scan so SW can handle to amount of data.
Then the second part is creating all the surfaces takes about 2 days using mainly boundry surfaces then patch in the rest.
I am just wondering if there is anyone out there in my boat?
I have been looking at a bunch of reverse engineering software that has the right tools to extract the surfaces or has tools that work for creating freeform surfaces easily. Power surface is up there, quicksurface (mesh2surface) was ok, then were was geomagic but that is $20,000.
Paul is one of the surfacing experts here on the forum. He may know of more tools than you’ve mentioned. I’m guessing for what you are doing SW may not be the right tool. But, I have no idea what that tool you should use.
We had a 3D scanning company come out and do some work on one of our bridges and they imported the data into SW. But that was about 6 or 7 years ago and I don’t know what other tools they used.
Scanning is one thing, process the data is another.
Check the software come with your scanner. It should has some editing capability.
Clean it up before sending to CAD.
And as you’ve found out, you’ll need to paid to play.
Just to help you think I know what I’m talking about:
Hi Fred,
The scanner came with Artech studio 13 I use that to do any mesh editing such as combining scans, positioning and decimation.
It does not have any tools to extract surfaces however
Yeah, Vx Model ( the software that comes with creaform scanners) does have a surface creation tool. I demoed it and it was ok but it left me with a bunch of unjoined surfaces which rekkd SW
I’ve done what you are doing in SW and it’s painful. Geomagic is the grandaddy of scan and mesh. I think NX can do it. You mentioned powerSurfacing, which would be my bet. Possibly Rhino.
My first question would be, how accurate, or are they flexible, is this the only scan or are there multiple datasets to reference/overlay (how do you know it is what it is or is it already verified, CMM)?
I personally do not know the other software tools but recognize they are common in use. His past version may not have some of what many of todays tools have so.. maybe the upgrade to get the X_T or STEP export is worth?
I would think the scan data or point cloud can be used in most other tools.
BTW, can he share the data, under NDA, so we can view/suggest options?
Reverse engineering or scan data is a pita, imho,.. the scanner, resolution and quality of the data of course important.. but, if you’re good with how to filter/parse the scatter, all the best.
I’d use Rhino3D and MeshLab (or another mesh tool) to do convert/manipulate the data.
Anybody know whether the software that Faro makes is good for this? They make expensive hardware for reverse engineering (that’s what I’ve seen for reverse engineering at a machine shop), maybe their software is good? The demo is free. But I have no idea what it costs. Here’s a link: https://www.faro.com/en/Products/Software/RevEng-Software
I’ve used both Faro and Romer arms and neither of them came with software to process the point clouds. The guys who did that the place I worked before used Rhino, but I have no experience with it, so I don’t know the process.
Yeah, I guess I wasn’t clear. No it does not appear that the software I linked to comes with any of the equipment that they make.
One thing to note is that Cura is maintained by one of the 3D printer makers and it’s a very good slicer (and I’ve heard the same of Prusaslicer, also maintained by a 3D printer manufacturer)…Maybe the same is true of the Faro software?
My best workflow that I have found and slapped together is.
export scan data from artech studio. 2. use austodesk recap to convert mesh to quads. 3. use fusion360 to convert the quads to tsplines and then finally export the surfaces as a step or iges. 4. import to solidworks and use exactflat to get the patterns out.
This was a failure though because I lost too much detail
I am stuck with SW (for now), I have 4 cnc machines that I have workflows in solidworks. Not to mention the plugins that are already paid for on SW.
So any software I do end up getting will have to be dedicated to mesh 2 surfacing. I really do not want another SW plug in tho, Sw has enough trouble working right all by itself.
I was just looking as SW 3D sculptor but guessing that I will have problems uploading my massive scan data to their cloud plus some data can not go to the cloud.
That is really disappointing to see SW come out with little cloud based apps instead of adding all of them to SW.
They are not really enough of anything to offer them as a stand alone.
3d sculptor, xdesign have some really cool looking tools that COULD be added to SW IF they wanted to.
Im probably going to do another round of demoing software and then hope I pick the right one.
I was really wanting to see some results of other users using scan data and pulling surfaces.
