Quick Summary
Additional Context
Somewhere right now, a mechanical engineering student is staring at a parts bin full of legacy components that don’t have CAD files. The assignment is reverse engineering, and the first step is getting that physical shape into a digital model. Calipers and patience will get partway there. A 3D scanner will get the rest.
For years, that’s where the conversation stalled. Professional scanning tools produced trustworthy data but cost as much as a department’s entire equipment budget. The affordable alternatives technically captured geometry, but the mesh output was often so rough that cleaning it up consumed whatever time you saved by scanning in the first place.
Finding something in between that actually worked meant doing a lot of research and accepting a lot of compromises.
That middle