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Thanks for the reply back. Yeah that price point is just a tad bit higher than I’d want to do. I actually would love to rent one out for just a few days but the companies that I’ve seen that would let you rent one only offer much higher end models and the price ends up being what the one you have costs. Worth it if you do it often to rent or just buy a lower end unit, but not for the onesy-and-twosy personal projects I have in mind.

I’ve tried a few phone apps, and got only ok results. I had one that let you scan a room. Cool. The results looked good because it used photos as a texture map, but the geometry itself was useless.

You might have issues bringing the point cloud data into CAD. You might end up having to recreate the part but using the point cloud as your reference. Solidworks does have a point cloud tool but no idea how good it is. Working with surfaces in Solidworks usually is not hugely fun. Rhine might be something to look into.

I haven’t heard of the Epic phone app but I might have to look it up.

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ZytaZiouZ@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

your reference. Solidworks does have a point cloud tool but no idea how good it is. Working with surfaces in Solidworks usually is not hugely fun.

All I really need is to get the surface data into something other than a “mesh” format. My actual job is working with Catia V5, but my work does not have any of the applicable Catia licenses to directly work with mesh files (such as STLs). If I can get to that point I’m golden. I have plenty of experience working with and creating surfaces.

FreeCad can apparently make a step file from meshes with a few steps, but when I did that with a simple 1 2 3 block scan, the result was about 2.5GB’s, and tends to lock up anything that tries to open it. I may look into an open source program to create usable surfaces from point clouds instead of trying to use meshes.

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- Hazdaz@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I have access to CATIA but bloody hell that software is complicated. I’ll stick with Solidworks even if it’s capabilities (at least with surfaces) is lower.
  
  Dealing with converting formats and getting your data where you can manipulate it is needlessly complicated. It isn’t a real CAD program, but consider looking at Blender to at least get the mesh into something more usable. Plus it’s free.
  
  Good luck dude. If these ever drop into the $200 range I’ll definitely pull the trigger on one.
  
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