We have used a Proliner for many years to obtain the data we require to design our boat canvas work within 3D cad software. The device has been great but the wire to the probe tip and clean line if sight needed for the wire have always been an issue. Over the years we have looked and trialled various photogammetry, laser and structured light scanners and they have always failed when used in the field.
Primarily, the highly reflective grp surfaces and lack of reference geometry together with being able to stand far enough away from the object to obtain a large enough area with photogammetry have been issues. Often the boats are on the water and you can not stand far enough away from the superstructure to obtain the data, wide angle lenses had an adverse affect on accuracy.
Coating the boat with a non reflective powder wouldn’t be an option and the shear amount of coded targets required would also be a problem.
The only system that looked hopeful was the Mantis, but the acquired data was too large to successfully process and way to time consuming.
We monitor new technology that comes to market, but advances seem to be mainly focussed on increased accuracy.
We do not need the high levels of accuracy for what we are doing, more important is portability, working without mains power, and cost affective and robustness to work in an outdoor environment.
I reckon what would work is cloud data that did not have to be significantly post processed and the ability to use a probe to register points within the cloud data.
The points would be used to draw curves within the cad package with the cloud data not required for much more that to give a visual representation of the surrounding surfaces. With a proliner we are after all acquiring points, the cloud data would give some context and hopefully a wire to a probe tip wouldn’t be needed.
We have looked at systems that register led’s on a staff connected to a probe tip but the environment was way to bright for these to register properly.
I reckon there must be a significant market for such a device, no need for accuracy to fractions of a millimetre and no requirement to process the cloud data.
Here is a link to a page on our website which gives an idea of what we do.
3D CAD Showcase - Boat Covers