Thanks a bunch Sid!  When I saw your pipewrench shot I noticed that even though topographically cobby the proportions looked good. Plus you mentioned being 2" short out of 32", which is more good news.

I look forward to learning the plugin settings you have.  With this plugin it seems trusting in science isn't a practical strategy.    BTW- I do the Rhino thing too, and also Solidworks. A/D (aka- reverse engineering) is a real time burner for me. If I can get this plugin to work @ 80% or better I'd be stoked.

Tom,
I'm doing the 90 deg setup now and the results are poor in a variety of ways.  Do you have any before/after scans to share that came out well?

Thanks!

Hello Hbaba,

> I'm doing the 90 deg setup now and the results are poor in a variety of ways.

What item are you scanning? Is it recognizable? Is it distorted? Is there a lot of unknown or unwanted stuff cluttering the scan?

What camera are you using? Can you setup AGC for Peak rather than the more common Average? If not, can you set the exposure time very low so that the laser is visible while the background is black?

If camera is upside down, did you select mirror and flip options in the Mach3 camera setup? If not, calibration is screwy and I have no idea what that does to the math. If not sure, post a screen shot with your calibration bar in place right after you calibrate.

Try scanning your calibration bar. Does the point cloud look like a square bar? If so, can you determine the size of the square bar from the point cloud?

Can you post some of your results?

Some stuff that would be informative:
Photo of your camera/laser setup.
Screen shot of probe video on Mach3.
Output (text file) from a scan that you are not happy with.
JPEG file showing views from various angles from MachCloud or other software.

> Do you have any before/after scans to share that came out well?

Not sure what you mean by "before/after" but I only have that one good scan of the key. I do have one of a penny but it does not show enough detail to say that it is anything but a disc.

My only probe is out of my hands at the moment. Should be able to do more next week when I get it back or maybe make another probe if I find time.

BTW, another camera that looks promising is the Playstation "Eye Toy". It does not have Peak AGC but does have the ability to turn AGC off and set exposure time very short. Not short enough to black out the background so it works better with house lights out or at least very dim.

Tom Hubin
thubin@earthlink.net

Can someone explain the features within the Cloud and Mesh drop down menu items.(Or point me to documentation)

I scanned a coin at 1mm steps as a crude test and it worked OK with the ball conversion and the default values.  I scanned the same coin at 0.25mm step size and I am having problems converting the file.  The cloud loads OK.

That brings me to the real question:  Where can I find a help file with info on how to set the parameters for the ball conversion and other options in MachCloud?   TIA
Bertho

Bertho, Have you looked in the video tutorials section? Support tab at the top of this page.

Brett

Thanks Brett,
I have not found any video relating to MachCloud.  Am I overlooking it?  TIA
Bertho

Hi:

 The ball algorithm is like rolling a ball over the points, when the ball rests on 3 points, a triangle is formed and
the ball is rolled over again. SO the Ball diamter shoudl be set slightly higher than the average disance betwen points.
Can be hard to figure, but using Decimate is a way to reduce the amount of poiints and make the ball rolling easier..
  Experimental program though, so its allot fo trial and error..

Art

Thanks Art,
I found a very nice ball algorithm description at: :  http://researchweb.watson.ibm.com/vistechnology/pdf/bpa_tvcg.pdf

In MachCloud what is minimum distance referring to?  What is the angle referring to?

I touch probe scanned a quarter in 1mm steps and the default MachCloud settings work.  I then scanned it with 0.25mm steps size and the cloud looks good but I cannot manage to get a ball conversion.  I have tried a lot of different combinations without luck.  What am I doing wrong?  Please see attached filr.  TIA
Bertho

Its the max angle a ball can fall into , stops undercleaving..

Art

Thanks Art,
I am sorry for being pest but can you or someone else show me the settings to use for MachCloud for the ball pivoting option on my submitted file?
The file looks clean and the data is on a 0.25mm grid from a touch probe so it will not get much better or simpler than that.  TIA
Bertho