Next Engine 3D Scanner

You know, this morning I woke up and said “let’s write about my new scanner today!” Ok, so maybe it is weird that I talk to myself in first person plural. I live alone, and it makes me feel like part of a group where everybody gets along, for the most part. You know, kind of Sybil-like. Anyway, I’m thinking about the scanner and what to write when I happen across Jeff Mirisola’s blog. Jesus, Jeff, why today? Of course Jeff has also written about his new Next Engine scanner too. Well, you’re gonna get a double dose, I’m that short of ideas. Had to give up writing about SW08 Beta, my blood pressure was getting too high. I’m sure Jeff will have something additional to say about it anyway. I hope both are interesting for you. Devon Sowell also wrote about it recently, so you may want to check his stuff out as well. I’ll try to write stuff that Jeff and Devon haven’t already said.

The Next Engine Scanner was introduced from the stage of the general session at SolidWorks World 2006. Everybody was wowwed, or at least I was. $2500 for a 3D laser scanner? That could save me a lot of money, and give me more control over the data that I have to work with. The last time I had someone do scanning for me I wound up with a useless mess.

I even had a project for it to be used on. Some of you will laugh, because you know that I get the craziest projects on earth. High heel shoes, a plastic clip for …adult entertainment professionals…(I swear, this is all work related stuff!), termite tunnels, toilet seat vents, that sort of stuff.

For the high heel shoes project, we had to get a sampling of real feet. So the other folks on this project assembled a group of women, and I had to scan their feet. I had to scan the bottoms of their feet, more precisely. Here was my set up:

The cereal box sized scanner is on a small camera tripod on the right, and is hooked up to a power cord and a usb data cable to my laptop. That contraption on my anonymous victim’s feet was a fixture meant to position the feet as if they were in high heel shoes. If you’re wondering, yes, it’s made from a 2×6 and tube socks stapled to the wood. The baby powder helps the scanner read shiny spots on the feet, and masks any stray odor. Interestingly, the white powder scans as blue.

The way the scanner works is that it first takes a digital photograph. I had a hard time trying to convince these women that by strapping their feet to a fixture that separated their feet by a few inches and then putting a camera in a location where it is looking right up between her feet didn’t mean that I was up to something nefarious. “The camera only has a focal range of 18 inches” I would tell them, not sounding entirely convincing, maybe because I’m giggling uncontrollably while saying it. It is really quite awkward to ask women in short skirts to lift their legs up a little higher so I can get a good shot. This was in the middle of the day in an office building. Later Friday evening it might have been less awkward.

Anyway, after the digital image, the scanner does its work. There are two focal ranges you can use. One is 18″, and the other is 6.5″. Within each range, you can also select the accuracy you want – a fast 30 second scan or a more detailed 90 second scan. For scanning feet, we used a fast scan. Detail down to .005″ wouldn’t buy me anything. I would be fine with a .030″ level of detail.

Once the scan was complete, and the software did some processing, it showed up on the screen.

Quite creepy, actually. Most of the women thought it was neat to see the bottoms of their feet in such extreme 3D detail on the computer screen. Once I rotated the image, they usually thought it was a bit creepy. It picked up cracks, lint, dirt, callouses, blisters, sesame seeds, scars, you name it. If it comes on feet, we scanned it. The way it does this is that it maps the 2D digital photo onto the 3D mesh. By default, the software culls out the data associated with dark parts of the image. The first image above shows the remaining data. The second image shows the original data set. It reminds me of Minority Report, where Tom Cruise is watching the 3D holograms of his family, that smeared look to the sides you get from only taking an image from one point of view.

You can take images from multiple points of view and align them to make a single data set all the way around an object. For this reason, the Next Engine comes with a small turn table which is automatically controlled by the device. The Next Engine scanner works best on objects which roughly fit into a 10″ cube. If they are bigger, you need to take multiple scans.

The quality of the data I received was dependent on a couple of things. Angle of the surface of the foot to the scanner, lighting of the foot for the initial 2D digital photo, and surface finish. You can post-process the data to get more of the original data or trim away some of the data.

The software itself is fairly primitive in the amount of control you are given, but you can generally get what you want, or close to it. Remember this is still a fairly new system.\n\nBringing the data into SolidWorks can be done in a number of ways. The easiest is to just press the SolidWorks button in the Scan Studio software. I used this in conjunction with SolidWorks 2008, so it is tough to say where the fault lies, but using this method, I usually crashed either Scan Studio or SW08 or both. The safer way to transmit data was to save as STL, although SW also reads the native Scan Studio format (*.scn) as long as the ScanTo3D add-in is turned on.

This is a point Devon talks about in his posts on the topic. If you want to buy Next Engine, make sure you know what you need before you buy it. The scanner itself is $2500, and comes with the Scan Studio Core software, which enables you to do basic but necessary functions. Scan Studio Pro is another $1000 and can output NURBS surfaces directly, create sketch data or compare scanned data to original CAD models. Rapid Works ($2500) appears to be reverse engineering software for working with scanned data. Additionally, to add the ability to turn mesh (STL, etc.) or point cloud (xyz) data into NURBS surfaces in SolidWorks, you need ScanTo3D, which is part of the Premium package ($8000).

ScanTo3D has some nice tools for editing out extra data, filling gaps, smoothing the data, and either automatically or semi-manually create NURBS patches. It also makes working with STL or any mesh/tessellated data or point cloud formats very easy. It even has a fantastic function that really saved me a lot of time, which was the ability to make regularly spaced section curves directly from the mesh data. I was creating NURBS, then making planes and using the Intersection Curve tool until I found this gem. Quite nice. From the curves, you can loft a surface.

Anyway, with the data from the scanner, I was able to read it into ScanTo3D and make real NURBS surfaces out of it automatically. Next is to scan the shoes so I can put the feet and the shoes together. The scanner is easy to use, but it definitely has the feel of a first generation product. The hardware seems fine, but the software is a bit feeble and frail. Next Engine’s support is enthusiastic, available during working hours. I like the wiki they have for support. It helps you remember answers to old questions. Much of the support is online.

Overall, if you need to scan stuff you can’t model easily, and you don’t mind working with stuff that doesn’t have all the little kinks worked out yet, I would recommend this gadget. If you can model the item by using calipers and squinting one eye, then that might be the better way to go.

Scanning objects to create data is one thing. Working with scanned data to create a real model is another. Scanned data tends to be approximate, especially when you’re working with something so organic as feet. Working with organic scanned data is another issue altogether because CAD models are so precise, and working with scanned data which is so approximate is often tough to do.

Go read Jeff’s and Devon’s blog posts on the topic to get the rest of the story.