Had my old boat scanned

[CC Guy]

HI Guys

I'm new here thought you like to see how my old wreck came out after scanning, I'm looking to use it to input into our cnc router,I ran across this site looking for something had the scan done a months back.

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Roger

[CatBuilder]

This is very impressive technology. What do they use as fiducials to keep the scan accurate?

[CC Guy]

Hi CatBuilder,

Thanks, as you can see its a hand held scanner that scans over the markers (dots you see) and builds the scan,works with lasers going back and forth, and is very accurate I'm told, you can see the layers of paint on the full size copy, the guy has had to reduce the file size for us to work with in our cad/cam system, as you can see she in bad shape and he scanned the good parts and mirrored to build the full hull and frames, took him a morning to scan,then a day or two to build up the cad drawings.

Roger.

[CatBuilder]

Ah, thank you for explaining. I thought the white dots were being projected from the handheld device. If they were placed on the hull ahead of time, that makes more sense as a set of fiducials.

[upchurchmr]

CC Guy,

Can you tell us the system used for the scan? Commercial name etc?

Marc

[Dirteater]

Please tell us the purple ones the paint! :D

Very cool tool.
Something the Coast Guard should start bringing along. Find those poor souls in the bottom of the boats and stuff.

Still what a great repair tool.
good stuff :cool:

DE

[CC Guy]

Hi Guys,

Glad to see you like it shame they can only scan and not rebuild as well,the guy said it was made in Canada, which is where I found the boat and had shipped over to the UK :)

Lets see if I can get a link to work,
http://www.creaform3d.com/en/handyscan3d/products/default.aspx?v=a

If not working search Creaform 3D scanners.

Roger.

[Squidly-Diddly]

Web page is all about "request a quote" and I don't really want to bother them if no way in hell I can afford one.

No worries, I'm sure in 5 years it will be $1000 for even better one.

Do they import data into Solidworks or other CAD as surface, or Solid w/some default back-thickness or what? Thin-Feature?


The website speaks of no more "volume scanning" as a good thing, but doesn't say what VS was. Only thing I can google is office supply paper scanners.

[upchurchmr]

I would like to understand what they are basically doing. I don't know how they are relating the measurements between each position of the hand scanner. Having delt with "photogrammetry" which they also reference, I would seriously doubt an accuracy of .004", since the aircraft firm I work for has two systems which make the same claim but neither one can manage two successive scans to get the points within that same tolerance. The photogrammetry system we use cost in excess of $500K.

Marc

[ACuttle]

Web page is all about "request a quote" and I don't really want to bother them if no way in hell I can afford one.

No worries, I'm sure in 5 years it will be $1000 for even better one.

Do they import data into Solidworks or other CAD as surface, or Solid w/some default back-thickness or what? Thin-Feature?

The website speaks of no more "volume scanning" as a good thing, but doesn't say what VS was. Only thing I can google is office supply paper scanners.

The scanner units I've used were fixed, rather than hand held, which cost around £50-70K ($100-140K) - but then you'd only be want to use on for a day to do the boat, so they’re better to hire rather than own.

(I'd guess one of these costs around £20-40K)

Without the scanning experience you would likely want someone else to do the scan for you and process the data. Scanners produce point clouds which then you need to manipulate into meshes and other usable data.

I'm not 100% about what it terms volume scanning but my guess is that it implies that you can perform the scan in a single operation rather than multiple scans which one then stitches together.

<Edit>
Having blown the picture up I can see that it isn't using targets, rather they are light spots. If there are no control targets and one still has a high accuracy level then it is a very smart machine and likely more dear for it.

<Previous Comment>
A downside of this method would be the small targets placed on the model, I would expect that it uses this to continuously reference its positions so every angle of scan is controlled. From experience I can say that sticking on the multiple targets is a pain in the ass, especially for any vessel larger than the one shown. With a fixed scanner one can get away with only 4-6 control points, which can be external from the target object.

Either way it's an impressive bit of kit and scanning technology has come on greatly in the last 10 years.

[Squidly-Diddly]

Have two tripods set up, then some 'sweeper' similar to a regular laser-level to paint the surface with a grid. Instead of just horizontal and vertical lines it should throw out a GRID of lines every 1/2" or cm, so the camera can take a nice pic of how these lines bend as they fall on curved surfaces.

Take two pics (one from each tripod) and feed the date into a computer to get a decent idea of the shape so you can then model parts from a surface of complex curves using CAD.

Not meant for documenting archeological artifacts, but good enough for boat hull shapes or autobody add-ons, or quickly getting all the interior dimensions of a space into a CAD program.

http://cloudfront.zorotools.com/product/full/1YRU8_AS01.JPG

[CatBuilder]

So when will people be scanning in boats and trading designs peep to peer, like music, videos or anything else that can be digitized?

[upchurchmr]

The typical use will be for people to get their new boat checked to see if it is twisted, warped, hollowed, etc, so you can get some quality control on the builder.
Expensive boats will get more expensive, racers will demand it no matter what, cheaper boats will come with reams of disclamers, lawyers will get more rich, and everyone will debate wether it made any difference.
A few will use them for historical documentation but hide the data, since it cost them a lot.
The state of Texas had a photogrammetry system demonstrated to document an Indian cave dwelling. It only took 4 days (the equipment had to be backpacked into the site), was correlated with color photos so you could tell what the point data matched and was apparently a great success. No noticeable use of the data and no followon uses of the technology.
This seems like such an interesting and usefull technology, but typically costly and requiring experts in the data useage.
I bet some Olympic sailors are using it to get their boats absolutely fair.

Marc

[upchurchmr]

CC Guy,

I don't want to intrude on your business or finances, but would you be willing to estimate what the scanning and data reduction/ transfer cost?

Please feel free to decline, but an understanding of the actual cost for a specific boat might give others the information to consider doing it for another project.

The guys who scanned your boat might get more business also.

Thanks, Marc

[Gripenland]

I use this technology daily at my job in the automotive industry. It can be really effective in the right application. The number of manufacturers of this type of equipment has exploded in the last years and the cost has dropped rapidly.

We recently tested a hand held device no bigger then a video camera that didn't need markers on the object being scanned. The scan of an object was really fast and simple. However, the post processing was slow.
But Imagen walking around in an boat show with this device. You could easily copy a number of designs in an hour :eek:

This problem is already a fact in the automotive industry.

[upchurchmr]

I was just reading a Wired magazine, Oct 2011, page 68. which talks about FREE software to stitch together 2D photos into a 3D model. required no targets, used a digital camera (not special).
Apparently it has some issues with "monochrome surfaces, reflective and translucent objects". It also has limitations on precision, which might be expected.
Autodesk's Photofly desktop app.
Looks like the comments about the technology "exploding" and becomming cheaper are certainly true, even if this particular app is not yet good enough for use to use on boats.

Has anyone used "Photofly"? (I would like the walk around "Video Camera" with its apparent precision).

Marc

[troy2000]

OK, I'm impressed. Of course, I'm easy. I thought it was amazing the first time I saw a mechanic at the compressor station where I work identify a 'hot' valve by pointing what looked like a timing gun at it....

Sometimes I feel like Alley Oop at a technology fair. And it doesn't help to know that a substantial number of those reading this will have no idea who or what Alley Oop was....

[Squidly-Diddly]

(their parametric architecture CAD suite) FREE for Student Lic. !!!!

I just downloaded it and I'm installing as we speak.

Website had "will expire in 30 days OR do you want FREE registration codes, etc.

I'm starting a Revit class tomorrow. I'll ask about Photofly.

You might need to be a "registered student" at some semi-real college to get the free Revit and other Autocad, or maybe not, I can't remember.

[CC Guy]

Hi guys,

I'm no expert on this all I did was think do I really won't to spend days drawing this up,so just did a google search and went from there,I was a bit sceptical myself, as he lives close he popped round and did a test as he was interested to see how it would turn out, the picture is of him doing the test.
I have set the boat up on its side so its easy to walk along to scan,yes he has to stick markers on for his scan gun as its a few years old now but said they also have new ones that don't need any to scan but are slightly less accurate.
He has said if I leave the markers on he can come back and rescan any parts that may be missed and mesh it into the original files, the scan files are lots of meg far to big for our cadcam.

I'm a woodworker by trade but not a boat builder....now one for the experts here, as I said to build up the hull he mirrored one side to the other he found it to be off by 1/2 inch (one side of the hull was lower than the other) was this just how it was back in the day 1957 or was it extra hook to make her run flat with only the driver?
Its a 16ft Ski boat double planked running a gray-marine fathead 6, 136 hp flywheel forward.

The scanning guy is real easy to talk too, I think he likes old boat too, he is in his late 50's and has taken this on after leaving our MOD he can take it on a plane as he calls it a digitizing camera Not a laser device, so all you guys in sunny parts of the world he would look at as winter is on its way here.

As for cost I did a deal with him scan and cad files under £500 I think he did a great job of it and he got a bit carried away, but good work always brings more.

Here is a link to his site http://www.3d-laserscanning.co.uk/index.html

Some pictures of the test scan
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[MikeJohns]

A related thread here too:
http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/general-computing/scanner-37311.html

I've only seen the fixed LIDAR type scanners used and they are quite fast, the limited depth of field for these hand held devices would make for a long process. If you stitch together numerous scans I'm not sure how time consuming ensuring accurate registration would be.

[erik818]

Through my work I came with a system that keeps track of a persons head in all six degrees of freedom (x, y, z, yaw, pitch, tilt). The system used a camera (or several, I don't remember) on the head and more or less randomly located light dots in the ceiling. The camera(s) and the light dots were quite simple. The software was not. I would guess that the boat scanning system discussed in this thread is something similar, and that stitching of the images is performed automatically by the software.

With two cameras with a fixed distance between the apertures all information will be available for measuring a hull using objects with contrast on the hull. Maybe one camera that is moving will also work. All it takes is a computer and a hacker with lots of time. The dots are for providing high contrast objects to make the image processing easier.

Erik

[ACuttle]

With my previous employer we worked on a pretty good range of projects:
http://www.djaweb.co.uk/index.php/user-stories/marine/83-hms-victory
http://www.djaweb.co.uk/index.php/user-stories/marine/75-yacht-hull-fairing
http://www.djaweb.co.uk/index.php/user-stories/marine/68-19m-trawler
http://www.djaweb.co.uk/index.php/user-stories/marine/56-65-tug

Which covered historical recording to reverse engineering. I don't think there is much danger of anyone using a scanner to steal designs, anything you could do with a scanner you could do with any other method and at the end of the day you're only capturing hullforms. They're not very subtle either so no-one is going to be doing it on the sly.

Ballpark figures for accuracy are 1-10mm for laser systems and <1mm for photogrammetry, I worked with people doing some of the QC for the Type 45's and they were down to nano-meters for sonar mounts and similar. Reflective surfaces tend to cause a major drop off in accuracy.

[upchurchmr]

Drew,

Thanks for the information, it is actually a little larger tolerance than we required for Aircraft work. There clearly is the possibility to get closer tolerances over a smaller area, that's just not generally the point of this threads perspective.
Overall, your report matches what I have experienced. The new hand held scanner is outside of my experience.

Marc

[lumberjack_jeff]

Hackers are very close to doing this with consumer electronics.

I see .5mm accuracy of house-scale objects using open source software leveraging $200 worth of consumer electronics within two years.

The most challenging part is integrating the individual scans (inside and out) into a coherent model.

http://vimeo.com/28237890

[DCockey]

.....
The most challenging part is integrating the individual scans (inside and out) into a coherent model. .....

Software is currently available from a number of sources to match photos and generate a cloud of 3D points. PhotoModeler Scanner is an example of sofware which can be purchased. http://www.photomodeler.com/products/pm-scanner.htm

There are also services which will do the computations ont their computers using photos supplied.

The major limitation of these methods is the necessity for a surface with a relatively detailed, random "texture". They don't work with monocolor, glossy, smooth and/or translucent surfaces. (Note that "texture" is used here in the sense used in the 3D visualization community, the color and brightness of the surface, not the geometry of the surface.)

The original post was for a system which uses a laser and two cameras which works with a wider variety of surfaces.

[Joe Petrich]

We have used fixed scanners to document our hull molds for years. They really come in handy when you need data on a mold which was built pre-computer/NC using hand lofting and fairing, or when modifying any existing mold to get 'as built' dimensions. We use outside providers for the work and receive point cloud, polygon mesh, and NURBS surfaces as deliverables. The accuracy is well within anything required for boat building.

For small jobs we use a photogrammetry program which runs as a plug-in for our 3D program.

[CC Guy]

Hi Guys, thanks for posting your views on scanning,will keep you posted on how accurate it is when I cnc the new and try it against the old :)
This is how I set the hull up and the scan was done with all the supports in, then deleted from the scan/3D cad.
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It was a bit tight to get her into the spot I'm going to work in :) no scan for this just a stick of inches and I now Know it fits through a 3ft 1/2in opening ;)

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[hoytedow]

Wow!!

[upchurchmr]

CC Guy,

Can you tell us the reason you picked this particular Boat? Designer, Builder, or specific model? Obviously you were really interested in this boat with all the trouble you have gone thru.

Marc

[CC Guy]

HI Marc, the boat is not that a well regarded in the USA as it was made by Correct Craft compared to other US brands but this model was only made for 2 years and only a few remain.

The boat is of its time and make me smile, I was told it was chalked out full size like most of there boat by W C Meloon in the loft of the factory.
The company is still going strong with the family still involved had the pleasure of meeting one of the founders sons this year he is in his 90's and gave a talk about how they made boats for the war effort.

The boat I have is called a Star Flite its only 16ft and came with a flat head 6 gray or Y block V8 a good friend built me a Y block and shipped it over to the UK as I was told that the 6 pot was shot, well I managed to free it up and it ran after years of being seized up so now I have 2 engines.

Here are some pictures of one in the US I hope I can match it over here :cool:
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[FMS]

Interesting thread CC Guy.
I appreciate the pricing as well.
As you worked with the files, how clean is the data to work with?
And how is your project coming along?