Rhino/Alias/Metris/Raindrop Geomagic

[Bkerila]

Does anyone have an experiences that they can share using any of the above (or other S/W if similar) to design stylized, surfaced models from digitized raw data? What are the pluses and minuses? What method of digitizing have you used? Which S/W works best for surface manipulation? How well do they port to other S/W packages (Pro/E for instance)? How easy to move to Rapid Prototypes and/or injection mold tooling? Any drawing capabilities (any need?).

Thanks,
Bob Kerila, PE

 

[soy]

I would love to know this info too.

currently, i am using catia mainly, but wondering should i use pro-E, rhino, maya and so on for the other program to make the product look more real.

soy

 

[knobhead]

Rhino has a reasonably good photo-realistic renderer built in. They do a free 30 trial day if you want to play with it. I think it's

http://www.rhino3d.com

I get best results from exporting from Rhino and rendering in POV-Ray, a ray tracer. You can get some unbelievable shots with that. (

http://www.povray.org/)

Pov-ray is free too, so you might be able to get images directly.

As for modelling from point data, I did have a go at trying some reverse engineering of a component from a CMM. I found the best result was simply from using the probe to get 'slices' of points of the part, and then just creating splines from those points, adn then lofting that. Took a LOT of computer time to work it out though. Excessive accuaracy is a sign of poor breeding. -Socrates.

 

[jackk]

We looked at a mechanical digitizer called the Faro Arm a couple years ago. It was pretty easy to use, quick and gave us some good surface results when we did a pilot with our CATIA system. It worked well when we needed to make a new surface model of an existing part. But we had problems when we tried to match up a partial digitized section into an existing surface model. I believe the software we used was called SURFACER by ICEM. I recall it did a nice job of fitting curves and/or surfaces to the digitized data from the Faro Arm.

 

[jdsmi]

We do a fair amount of reverse engineering. The plus side to this process is the end result - an electronic representation a physical part. The minus is the steps it takes to get there. Without experience and a good plan, working with point data can be very discouraging.

For simple, less complex projects, we use our Faro arm to gather the point data. The points/splines are then exported to CAD (SolidWorks or Pro/E) and the model is built. To acheive a good model, this can be a very tedious and lenghty process.

We have the more complex, stylized parts scanned with white light or lazer and then surfaced with Raindrop Geomagic. The surfaces are then imported into CAD and the solid is built. The surfaces export very well but I have to say that it takes a little trial and error in determining the best method in preparing the Geomagic surfaces for your application and CAD platform (number of patches, split locations, etc).

The nice thing about software like Geomagic is the polygon model that the software creates (.stl) can be directly exported for Rapid Prototyping, analysis, or even tooling. Once the shape has been tested and approved, the surface/CAD model can then be created and documented.

 

[raycmm]

You should have a look at G-Scan.
Developed and sold by ROMER worldwide (

http://www.romer.fr

) and by AXILA in north america (

http://www.axila.com

).
It creates STL files and also sections in different formats (i don't remember which ones). It is connected on their articulated arms.
I have seen files coming from this digitizer : really impressive.

 

[dannyqm]

Yes the G-Scan is a very good solution to reverse engineer parts. It mounts on portable arms, so that it can scan parts anywhere.
Concerning the different softwares, I wouldn't compare rhino to the others. Rhino is an efficient and low cost CAD program that works on nurbs : perfect to create surfaces, draw parts... even from clouds of points i think.
Metris and Geomagic are dedicated to clouds of points, such as Icem Surf, Polyworks... They can create STL files for rapid prototyping, and also do some CAD inspection based on the clouds of points. I think metris is based on autocad. Does someone know about that ?