[greybeard]

Found this link via a thread in the David forum.

http://www.3dvsystems.com/technology/product.html

Once this chip is out in the marketplace, will other methods become redundant ?

John

[CJL5585]

John,

Thanks for the link. I have been hoping for something like this to come to market. 3D from matched digital cameras.

It requires a fantastic amount of data processing to pull this off in real time, and it will only get better as the technology advances.

Jerry

[braidmeister]

No. At least not for a while anyway. When they say 'affordable' that can mean any number of things, and usually that it is too expensive for us 'bottom feeders'.

Performance wise, if you are satisfied with the David, then this will be right up your alley. It lists 'high res depth of field' as 1-2 CM. That doesn't get the job done for me. I can do better with a touch probe...

However...you will be able to digitize PEOPLE safely with their eyes open, which aside from a few products out there, is hard to do.

I guess we'll have to wait & see what the market brings. I doubt it will replace much of anything. Everybody thought that the NextEngine was going to shut down all of the higher priced laser scanners out there at it $2500 price. It did no such thing. It may have taken a few sales away from Roland (whose product is superior to the NE), but that's about it.

-B

[senor J.]

I tentatively disagree with your assessment of the nextengine scanner. It is true that the early, and even current release of the scanner + software was full of bugs. but they are, to their credit, resolving those issues at a adequate rate. given time ( a year or so ) roland digital wont have really anything over nextengin. In fact the next engine approach of being able to move the scanner freely and then being able to align the scans in a truly 3d universe verses just the 360 single plane rotation that the roland model offers will surpase and outdate the roland model of scanning. Nextengine, while not there quite yet, has my vote. That is to say, If I was a betting man I would bet on nextengine to be the future of Home/semi profesional/ sometimes profesional scanning, as long as tolerances are not NASA precise. By the way I own one and have spent literally hundreds of hours using, and am painfully aware of the current realities and imminent possibilities of the scanner. Already I have seen drastic improvements in the software hardware interface that has allowed me to make $$ easily enough to pay for the scanner that with the roland I would not have been able to make, what with its single plane 360 scan instead of the nextengin truly 3d scanning capabilities

[senor J.]

see my obviously unbiased review of the next engine scanner I posted 4 months ago versus what I just posted today. Here is the title of the post under laser digitizing. ""New" 3D Scanner from NEXTENGINE" from a first hand rather cynical perspective you can see I have slowly changed my mind and realized that Nextengine is becoming a blessing to the hobbiest/semiprofesional/sometimes professional, cad developer/machinist.

[braidmeister]

Senor,
No doubt the NE scanner is a neat little piece of hardware. For the money it is hard to beat. You have hundreds of hours using the NE scanner. New users would find the Roland much easier to use initially. Plug it in, and scan away. The NE (as YOU already know!) is very touchy with depth of field and getting it right to get a clean scan. It takes some time and patience to get the NE to perform as you expect. All in all it's a great little scanner for the price and does offer more flexibility in scanning (like stitching large panels together etc) than the Roland. I've used both, and the Roland is less finicky than the NE.

The resolution offered by the NE and Roland was too coarse for what I need, so I didn't wind up buying either of them...but for most people the NE is a great little package. Even if it is clunky, I gotta hand it to NE for doing a great job on the software. It has a lot of functionality for the price...almost unbelievably so.

Post some pics of what you have scanned. It would be interesting to see what you are getting with your NE as a seasoned user. This would probably go far to offer encouragement to those who have one but haven't quite gotten it dialed in yet...

-Brady