Digital Shape Scanning Revolution

Digital shape scanning (DSS) is a revolutionary new activity that makes use of 3D cameras to snap 3D photographs of objects such as aircraft wings, turbine blades and human teeth. The 3D photographs consist of millions of points that are referred to as point clouds or scans. Point clouds are versatile digital entities that can be used to quickly and accurately fabricate, inspect, reverse engineer, analyze and visualize objects of all sorts. The figure below illustrates several uses of a digital shape scan (dark blue image). "Zooming into" the scan on a digital computer reveals that it is composed of millions of regularly spaced points.

A groundbreaking white paper on shape scanning entitled: "Capturing a Competitive Edge through Digital Shape Sampling & Processing (DSSP)" was published by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) in 2005. The author, Peter Marks, Managing Director of Design Insight, Santa Cruz, CA, is an internationally recognized expert in new product development and the tools needed to support it. DSSP is a category name that defines a rapidly emerging industry focused on (a) collecting dense data that represents the 3D surface of an object, and (b) processing the data into useful information. The collection focus is hardware oriented and the associated products are often referred to as digital shape scanners (DSS). These scanners are capable of acquiring millions of points in short periods of time. The processing focus is software oriented and the associated products are often referred to as point cloud analysis (PCA) software packages. These packages can create useful information such as CAD models from millions of points.

Here are some interesting quotes from the SME's DSSP paper:

• "Shape sampling is the ideal tool to capture the visual, spatial, tactile and kinesthetic elements of the customer's context. Shape sampling is also a more productive tool, compared to CAD, for many design, analysis and collaboration tasks."
  
• "It turns out that DSSP is an ideal tool to help companies evaluate and optimize various manufacturing processes. This applies especially to netshape processes (thermoplastic injection molding, thermoset and RIM molding, casting, forging, die stamping and powder metallurgy)--essentially any process where molds or dies and production variables control a complex shape.
  
• "If a company wants to win at manufacturing, it has to choose the right processes. Only then can it decide to keep them in-house or find a sourcing partner. DSSP is a powerful tool to evaluate alternative processes early on and choose the best. It also provides deep insight into process capability and the optimum trade-off between tight tolerances (performance, reliability, safety) and loose tolerances (lower costs, higher yields)."

Download Peter Mark's DSSP paper.