3d Scanner experience

I’ve a project in mind and designing it in 3dCAD would be pretty useful.

I used to be [15 years ago 🙄]  pretty competent with Autodesk Inventor so The CAD element I should be OK with, but the project would be built upon a pretty complex shaped structure with area approx 3m x 3m.

Whilst I could set up a frame to take point measurements from to model out the underlying base and build it up from datum points, using a 3d scanner could be a useful starting point and they seem to be pretty cheap second hand on E-bay.

So any experience in the hobbyist level 3d scanners and how easy is it to load into a CAD package to then build on?

Thanks

I’ve seen reasonable scans done with the Lidar on an iPhone before though I have no direct experience of it.

Best of luck

Depending what you are willing to spend, you might get better results using photogrammetry for something of this size

Timely thread!

I’m toying with the idea of buying an Einstar Shining 3d scanner for industrial work place scanning (with a few foreigner jobs at home). They are £960 on RS (plus Vat). It’s difficult to find a representative opinion of them as paid/sponsored influencers are promoting them. I do know they are massively resource hungry but I have a new £2.5k Solidworks laptop so it should be okay.

Interested if a STWer has used one

most CAD programs should be able to open the STL file

it should then be fairly easy to fit primitive shapes (planes, cylinders, etc) to the mesh.

(some programs will allow you to best-fit shapes to any selected data, or you may have to do it long-hand, by trying different nominal values until it ‘looks’ right…)

complex surfaces can be a little bit more tricky…

you’re probably aiming to replace (delete) as much of the scan-data as possible.

what kind of accuracy is required? sub-millimetre, or near-enough ?

I’d be happy to within a couple of mm – so pretty rough as these things go.

If you’re in the West Midlands you’re welcome to have a play with my 3d scanner. Bought a revopoint miraco a couple of weeks ago so still in the learning curve at the moment, but planning to do he same as you and use it to facilitate, design and fabricate some car parts. The bits I have scanned (car parts) have come out pretty well though.

If anyone has suggestions for software for design then shout up. Looking to design something, then ‘unfold/flatten’ it to get it laser cut and folded/welded. Currently using SketchUp pro, but dabbling with blender.

I’m toying with the idea of buying an Einstar Shining 3d scanner

I have a (much older) Shining 3d desktop scanner, it was very good (in it’s time!) and good VFM, I’m sure this is the same.

The question is really, what do you want to do with the scan once you have it? As everything requires extra work, sometimes a huge amount! Unless you have specialised reverse-engineering software (which I don’t!)

The question is really, what do you want to do with the scan once you have it? As everything requires extra work, sometimes a huge amount! Unless you have specialised reverse-engineering software (which I don’t!)

I currently measure everything by hand when reverse engineering stuff so im wanting to chuck the mesh/object into Solidworks to then get datum points to model new components from.

cleetonator

If anyone has suggestions for software for design then shout up. Looking to design something, then ‘unfold/flatten’ it to get it laser cut and folded/welded. Currently using SketchUp pro, but dabbling with blender.

Get on proper 3D CAD software before you ruin yourself. Sketchup is not a tool for err well anything.  Solidworks has a low cost hobbyist option but there’s also Fusion 360 or Onshape which are very cheap if not free for personal use.  Both come well regarded and will do sheet metal.

Solidworks and Onshape both have powerful sheet metal functions.

My brother has a lot of success using photogrammetry for complex models. iPhone LIDAR will work at a pinch, though.

Bear in mind that a complex photogrammetry computation may need to render overnight on a powerful computer.