Poor Man's digitizer - Sketching over a Camera .jpg

[EricatNordic]

We don't have phyical space or budget for a fero Arm down in the bilge of the boats and I need to make parts that fit in there. Plus I have no idea how to model parts from point clouds without them looking like playdo.

I wondered about taking pictures in the primary views and sketching over the top of them to start a part.
Anyone tried this? What the best way to compensate for the perspective view from the camera vs the planar view on the screen? Any other tricks or warnings? We work +/- 1/8" if our lives depend on it, other wise if things are within 1/2" we're lucky.

 

[toffeet]

Hello EricatNordic,

It's a very good idea. When taking the picture try to stand perpendicular relative to the face of the part. Don't stand to close either. It's better to stand as far as possible and to zoom in, this will reduce the perspective effect.

When inserting the photo as an image in a sketch, scale it so that at least 2 or 3 measurements correspond with the real part. You can also tilt the image so that a certain edge is level.

This method is not perfect but it has helped me alot in the past.

Solid Edge V19 SP1 on WinXP SP2

 

[EricatNordic]

Good to here someone else has used it. I'm going to be relying on a lot of sketches over pictures to make a part I'm working on now. I'll share any other tips as I discover them.

 

[onefjef]

I have used the picture overlay method before but in Autocad. It helps to have seperate x and y scaling factor ability. With this you can semi-adjust for perspective at one depth.

Jef

 

[revdode]

Again, I've not used this in solidedge. Another tip to add to the above is if perspective remains a problem you can correct for it in many popular graphics packages. To make this easier layout a full length X & Y reference scale (I used 8'x4' sheets of 2" square wire mesh) you can then tweak the image to fix the perspective.