Wouldn’t it be nice if the Built Environment were this controlled? Notice that the software automatically builds surfaces, immediately doing away with the point cloud. If only it were that simple outside the lab.
Home » Technology » 3D Laser Scan into Geomagic with a Faro Arm
Thanks for digging this video out. It’s been a long time since it was recorded. In the part modeling environment you have the convenience of using the arm and having ordered data like that. Generally you scan the entire object and get a nice mesh of the part when you’re done. It’s not CAD surfaces yet though. Lots of folks think it’s already CAD at that point, but you still need to go through a workflow to create your model.
The environment in factories and landscapes when scanned with a terrestrial scanner are much different. Those point clouds tend to be very uneven. They are dense close to the scanner and sparse further away. This reeks havoc on any meshing algorithms and you need to process it differently. Then, the noise associated with the scanning process of those things compounds the problems when processing data.
I’ve seen too many times where a user scans piping from 20-30 meters away and the pipes are 2-3″ OD. At that distance, the points are usually about 0.5″ apart and the noise is about 0.125-0.25″ thick (think of it as fuzz around the part). Needless to say, it’s going to be tricky getting a lot of useable data out of that particular scan.
If you optimize your process and follow best practices then you’ll have much better results in the end. I’ve seen very good results in the ship building industry when the vessels were reverse engineered using the terrestrial scanner and Geomagic Design X. That would probably be my recommendation for this type of data in the end.
Thanks Nick – valuable insight.
Well said Nick. Soo many observers think this is just a small step but in reality it’s a huge this. To coin a phrase……the devil is in the detail! As we well know