Hey all, Does anyone use a 3d scanner to aid in designing? I'm looking to maybe get a Kinect, and was wondering if anyone had any experience with it. Thanks!
A kinect is one way to do it if you have the know how (which is out there on the web) Another way is 123D Catch.
I use scanned data as a base for my wearable designs. Right now I use an industrial white-light scanner, but before that I used a Kinect and photogrammetry (like 123D Catch) for several designs. The reason I had to upgrade, other than the noisy data, is the fact that neither of these techniques produces designs at an accurate scale. I need accurate scans to ensure that the design will fit properly. By taking many measurements and re-scaling the output from Kinect/Catch it is possible to correct the scale, but they are still only accurate to about 1cm at best. Using an inexpensive scanner like Next Engine will take that down to a couple of millimeters, but it is very sensetive to variations in color/texture or movement. Catch and Kinect work best with larger objects that are then scaled down so that the lack of detail doesn't matter.
As I have used a nextengine, I can offer the following. It is very sensitive to ambient lighting conditions. It is also very sensitive to the object to be scanned color. Dark colors are tough. Even on its lowest resolution it produces very large poly counts. It is pretty accurate, on it's lowest resolution it was within .5mm. YMMV bvr