Features Spline Spline extractor function will distill them down and bring them into your CAD system in a snap. A spline is a mathematical spec for a compound curve. The splines generated by PRO are drawn automatically by slicing through your object's scan data in a set of parallel planes. NextEngine's ScanStudio PRO integrates Rapidform XOR's powerful high-end spline algorithms with a unique new visual interface that makes it very easy, even fun, to specify the axis and spacing for exactly the contours and density you want. After a surface has been converted to splines, the dataset is small and portable. Compared with raw scan points, spline files are orders of magnitude smaller. Splines can then be sent to a wide variety of CAD systems in IGES or STEP formats. Once in your CAD system, you can manipulate these spline curves with control points, and loft through them to create sophisiticated surfaces for your solid model. Splines are a very efficient way to describe compound surfaces that would be too difficult or time-consuming to draw by hand. Back to Top>> AutoSurface Think about using your mouse to draw a CAD model of a person's face. It's hard. Really hard. Too many different curves flowing into one another. Yet with a set of 3D data from your NextEngine Scanner, you can create an awesome CAD model, from idealized curves and surfaces made at the click of one button. How? With ScanStudio PRO's AutoSurfacer. This advanced Surfacer interprets 3D scan spatial points and automatically synthesizes NURBS surfaces algorithmically. What's NURBS? Non Uniform Rational B-Splines... a fancy name for a set of mathematical formulas that describe a surface patch. Instead of a mesh of triangles, imagine the curvy copper panels that form the Statue of Liberty. Each patch of copper has a perimeter described by spline curves. Got lots of twists and turns in your shape? The AutoSufacer will break it down into smaller patches, fit them together in a mosaic, and give you a NURBS description of your original shape. Compared with raw scan points, it's orders of magnitude less data to describe a surface. But what makes the Rapidform algorithms so special? It's the combination of a surface synthesizer that is so clean and defect-free, yet so faithful to the original shape data, even as it produces a remarkably compact mosaic of surface patches. NURBS AutoSurfacing is just another example of the value inside every seat of PRO. Underlying these functions is a massive library of sophisticated math that took nearly a decade of research to build. Now you can command it all with a single click, and all for a price that's just unbeatable. Back to Top>> Compare ScanStudio PRO's Comparison Analyzer is a powerful new tool that gives you a detailed graphic report about the differences between any two shapes. Perhaps you scanned a sample part for something you designed in CAD, and now you want to see how closely the as-built part follows the design intent. Or maybe you have two sample parts and you want to see how much they differ. You can set the tolerances for your analysis so that deviations can be mapped quantitatively according to the scale that matters to you. The output is rendered visually with a detailed color map that shows you the deviations at glance. The color map is aligned and overlayed directly onto your 3D model so you can spin it around and examine fine details. Comparison analyzers are worth a lot as standalone tools, but with ScanStudio PRO, precision comparison analysis is neatly integrated with all your other scan processing tools at no additional cost. It's another great value that's built right in. Back to Top>> Orient Setting up your reference origin for your scan data should be trivial, right? You'd be surprised how much fiddling this can require inside your CAD system. That's why ScanStudio PRO provides a state-of-the-art visual interface to precisely position your part and it's origin, with unparalleled ease. Many parts have a natural flat base that makes a good origin. Nudge your mouse and squint to align to it, right? No way. Just click three spots, and PRO's automated BaseFInder will identify the base plane and reorient the part for you. Want to move just the object, or just the orgin
or both together to see other perspectives? They're all here, with just one click. Or ever need to tweak just one axis without disturbing anything else?. It's built-in here too. And all these moves have a visual presentation that is so vivid and rich, it makes it really easy to see what exactly you're doing. Back to Top>> CAD Outputs Once you have your splines or NURBS surfaces, you'll want to take them into your CAD system and scale them, stretch them, revise them or combine them with other shapes. How will you bring them in? ScanStudio PRO includes an export system with translators that cover all the major CAD platforms. You can output to IGES and STEP standard exchange formats. There's also a button to directly put your surfaces into RapidWorks without translation. RapidWorks adds more capabilities to let you model and edit your shape along side your original scan data, before you export to your CAD system. Or, if you're a SolidWorks 2007 Premium user, you can transfer the scan data to ScanTo3D - the new reverse engineering feature in SolidWorks - with a single button. (Note: other versions of SolidWorks are supported via STEP or IGES files) Back to Top>> Measure ScanStudio PRO can precisely measure volumes and surface area for any 3D model scanned with Nextengine's Scanner. New features will be added soon to allow point-to-point measurement of linear dimensions. Back to Top>> | 
