Is it possible to model from a 3D laser scan

andrew_hicks

I have an upcoming job where a 3D laser scan will be taken of an excavator bucket. From that i have to model it and work out wear plates. I think the the file will be a DXF file. Can it be done?

mahir

If the scan comes in as a point cloud, you'll need some sort of software (likely available in the AppStore) to convert it into useful surface geometry. If the output is 3D surface geometry (e.g. STEP file), you can import it directly into OS. There are probably some offline programs (free and paid) that will convert the point cloud into surface data for OS to work with. 

ml

interesting question I've had also once for myself, but never demystified it in detail.

there is a 3d point tool from @dave_cowden named '3D point tools for Onshape (BETA)' under http://store.parametricparts.com/products.html
I do not know the limitations and if it can help at your job

I found then also: http://meshlab.sourceforge.net/
stated in wikipedia it seems very common and handy to 'processing of unstructured large meshes and provides a set of tools for editing, cleaning, healing, inspecting, rendering, and converting these kinds of meshes'

is able to import xyz points, e. g. http://fabacademy.org/archives/2014/tutorials/pointcloudToSTL.html
export formats according to the homepage: PLY, STL, OFF, OBJ, 3DS, COLLADA, VRML, DXF, GTS, U3D, IDTF, X3D

Onshape import formats (from help):

Parasolid v10 to v27

ACIS up to R21, 2016 1.0

STEP AP203 and AP214 (Geometry only)

IGES up to 5.3

CATIA v4 from 4.15 to 4.24

CATIA v5 from R7 to R25 (v5-6R2015)

CATIA v6 R2010x to R2013x, R2015x

SolidWorks 1999 to 2015, 2016

Inventor 9 up to 2015

Pro/ENGINEER, Creo from Pro/E 2000i to Creo Parametric 3.0

JT formats up to 10

Rhino (.3dm)

Collada 1.4.1 (without joints data)

perhaps there is a proper match that fixes your need.

let me know your results. I am interested in too

dave_cowden

thanks for the mention, @ml.

3d points is very much a work in progress. it can import points, but it can't do much that's useful with them.  I have a version in development that will create lofts and surfaces from a point cloud, but currently work has stopped due to lack of support in the Onshape API.Onshape provides very, very limited surface tools that are accessible via FS.  

Currently, the in-development version can :

• import 1 or more groups of points
• create 3d splines from a group
• auto-detect and interpolate a best fit plane from a group of points
• create a surface, IF the points are on a regularly spaced grid

I have wanted to do more, but Onshape support for more is quite limited. Let me know if any of these would be useful, and I can try to accelerate getting the feature for someone to try. I don't imagine any of these use cases is what OP needs here.

mahir

If the scan comes in as a point cloud, you'll need some sort of software (likely available in the AppStore) to convert it into useful surface geometry. If the output is 3D surface geometry (e.g. STEP file), you can import it directly into OS. There are probably some offline programs (free and paid) that will convert the point cloud into surface data for OS to work with. 

andrew_hicks

Thank you very much Mahir i have a direction to go in now, i just was not sure how to go about it.

ml

interesting question I've had also once for myself, but never demystified it in detail.

there is a 3d point tool from @dave_cowden named '3D point tools for Onshape (BETA)' under http://store.parametricparts.com/products.html
I do not know the limitations and if it can help at your job

I found then also: http://meshlab.sourceforge.net/
stated in wikipedia it seems very common and handy to 'processing of unstructured large meshes and provides a set of tools for editing, cleaning, healing, inspecting, rendering, and converting these kinds of meshes'

is able to import xyz points, e. g. http://fabacademy.org/archives/2014/tutorials/pointcloudToSTL.html
export formats according to the homepage: PLY, STL, OFF, OBJ, 3DS, COLLADA, VRML, DXF, GTS, U3D, IDTF, X3D

Onshape import formats (from help):

Parasolid v10 to v27

ACIS up to R21, 2016 1.0

STEP AP203 and AP214 (Geometry only)

IGES up to 5.3

CATIA v4 from 4.15 to 4.24

CATIA v5 from R7 to R25 (v5-6R2015)

CATIA v6 R2010x to R2013x, R2015x

SolidWorks 1999 to 2015, 2016

Inventor 9 up to 2015

Pro/ENGINEER, Creo from Pro/E 2000i to Creo Parametric 3.0

JT formats up to 10

Rhino (.3dm)

Collada 1.4.1 (without joints data)

perhaps there is a proper match that fixes your need.

let me know your results. I am interested in too

dave_cowden

thanks for the mention, @ml.

3d points is very much a work in progress. it can import points, but it can't do much that's useful with them.  I have a version in development that will create lofts and surfaces from a point cloud, but currently work has stopped due to lack of support in the Onshape API.Onshape provides very, very limited surface tools that are accessible via FS.  

Currently, the in-development version can :

• import 1 or more groups of points
• create 3d splines from a group
• auto-detect and interpolate a best fit plane from a group of points
• create a surface, IF the points are on a regularly spaced grid

I have wanted to do more, but Onshape support for more is quite limited. Let me know if any of these would be useful, and I can try to accelerate getting the feature for someone to try. I don't imagine any of these use cases is what OP needs here.

jacques_spillmann

@dave_cowden,
I'm interested in only the first feature of your workflow above: import groups of points.
do you have a FS that accomplishes this?
thanks

dave_cowden

Sorry, I don't. I started one a while back, but I didn't get far enough to make a useful feature. I ended up running into issues with lofted splines , which is quite common with this kind of thing

jacques_spillmann

@dave_cowden ,
correction, the first 2 features: import and create 3d spline