How to get a digital model of an object with a handheld 3D scanner
2019-06-01
As 3D printers get cheaper, 3D printing is getting closer to our lives. The desktop products are less than 10,000 yuan, and the price is no longer unbearable. But when it comes to 3D printing, many people have questions. What do I print? Traditional printers I can print documents, photos, pictures, what can I print with a 3D printer? This involves the 3D digital model. 3D modeling software like AutoCAD and Maya is not proficient in one day and two days. Where does the data source for 3D printing come from? This is the role of the 3D scanner, which converts the object into a 3D digital model and the rest is handed over to the 3D printer. Let's first understand some of the principles of 3D scanning.
A handheld laser scanner constructs a 3D graphic through a triangular ranging method: a handheld device emits a laser spot or a linear laser. The distance between the surface of the object to be tested and the handheld laser product is measured by two or more detectors (usually cameras). The data obtained by the scanner is imported into the computer and converted to a 3D model by software. Handheld laser scanners usually combine the data obtained by passive scanning (visible light) (such as the structure and color distribution of the object to be tested) to construct a more complete 3D model of the object to be tested.
How does a handheld 3D scanner generate a digital model of an object?
Hold the 3D scanner around the object for a week. At this point the scanner obtains spatial information about the object. The depth information is used to determine the position of each point on the surface of the object in space. The 3D scanner records several pieces of position information of an object at different angles. The software aligns these location information to obtain overall location information. The software fuses all the positional information into a complete object, and the modeling is complete.
The complete 3D digital model is composed of many small triangles that are combined into the surface of the object, so the number of small triangles that the 3D scanner can acquire and generate is directly related to the scanning accuracy. The greater the number of triangles, the higher the scanning accuracy.
Finally, the results are exported to a 3D file format, such as STL, OBJ, etc., which can be edited in 3D modeling software such as Maya, AutoCAD, 3DMax, or directly printed on a 3D printer.
