SolidWorks® Surfacing and Complex Shape Modeling Bible

Chapter 21. Working from Digitized Data

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Creating an orange juice bottle

• Creating a cast iron skillet handle

Digital scanning equipment is getting less expensive every year. The likelihood that you are going to either have a desktop scanner or receive data from some sort of 3D digitization device is always increasing. When you are dealing with complex and organic shapes, that likelihood increases even more. You need to be prepared to deal with this kind of data in its many possible forms.

Digitized data is collected by bouncing laser light off of the object being scanned, reading the reflections, and recording the coordinates of the points using text data. Getting good data from the process is dependent on several factors, including accuracy of the equipment, surface finish or treatment of the object, operator skill, and post–processing factors. While many scanning devices claim an accuracy of 0.005 inch or less, I would not rely on that sort of accuracy for models that need to be very precise. Sometimes the resulting data can be incomplete, with large sections of the part missing. If you must scan a part multiple times from different angles to get all of the faces of the part, you need to be aware of the possibility of scan alignment errors.

All of this is just to say that you need to take the data with a grain of salt. Realize that even though the data is generated by the advanced technology of lasers and computers, the many possible sources of error can result in data ...