scanning

[WScmm]

I have to do some reverse engineering. I have a SP600 head. When I usually do my scans I usually generate points after the scan. If I don't make a point cloud of points and just do scans, what can I do w/ the scans? We usually put the points into surfcam and make a solid model, can this be done w/ the scan w/out turning into points? Doing this would be faster then re running w/ points.

Thanks

[Matthew D. Hoedeman]

I have to do some reverse engineering. I have a SP600 head. When I usually do my scans I usually generate points after the scan. If I don't make a point cloud of points and just do scans, what can I do w/ the scans? We usually put the points into surfcam and make a solid model, can this be done w/ the scan w/out turning into points? Doing this would be faster then re running w/ points.

Thanks

You can leave the scans as polyline and export them as points, it is an option in the IGES export window.

[WScmm]

You can leave the scans as polyline and export them as points, it is an option in the IGES export window.

Matt, I don't know much about the cad software yet. I usually take the data to our cad guy and he will model it. I am trying to teach myself this end of it. Can I make a solid out of polylines? or is it easier to just connect all the points to make surfaces?

Thanks

[Matthew D. Hoedeman]

YOU can make surface data WITH Pcdmis, BUT only with PATCH scans, and it is NOT very good and VERY slow at it.

Myself, when I did scans, I would export the data twice, once as polylines and once as points (takes like 10 seconds each) and I then let the cad guys worry about it. I also gave them a file (txt file) along with it telling them what the probe radius was so they could then make offset surfaces from the center-of-ball data I gave them. As for a CAD software making the surfaces, some can use polyline easier than points, some are the other way around, some require SPLINES, in which case, they have to either make the splines out of the points OR convert the polylines into splines.

Pcdmis has made claims (in the past, don't know about recently) that they were going to add the ability to make surfaces from point clouds. I have yet to see it.

[WScmm]

Yes he does make everything into splines first. About this part

telling them what the probe radius was so they could then make offset surfaces from the center-of-ball data

Do you run your scans w/ your probecom/off? I run all my scans w/ probecom/on and I don't worry about ball center, is this wrong?

[Matthew D. Hoedeman]

Yes he does make everything into splines first. About this part Do you run your scans w/ your probecom/off? I run all my scans w/ probecom/on and I don't worry about ball center, is this wrong?

If you are scanning, lets say, a sphere, and you are using a patch scan.

You set the sphere to xyz zero
You set your scans to run from X- to X+ and your step-over from Y- to Y+
You make it a nice, square grid (just for the heck of it)
Initial point (well use a 5" sphere) X-1.732, Y-1.732
Direction in X+, so second hit will be X-1.702, Y-1.732 and so on
When you get done, you will NOT have a sphere. You will have a mess.
It will NOT compensate the probe in the Y axis for any of the points taken in this example (with a touch-trigger-probe), it will only comp in X and Z, the axis it is 'moving' in to take the row of hits.

[WScmm]

ok, that makes sense. Here is a pic of my scan. Pretty basic. I just never tried to model anything before and I am giving it a try. I was given a demo of some software, I got it imported now I have to go through the help files to see how far I can get.

Thanks