Daimler Chrysler speeds surface modelling with laser scanner

“The advantage of using the laser scanner is that it gives us a greater density of data,” explains Donald Misson, vehicle measurement lab supervisor at Daimler Chrysler. “Rather than cross-sections of an object we can provide complete surfaces, so there’s much less time required to generate surface models in the CAD system.” And ModelMaker, 3D Scanners’ laser scanning product, is helping Daimler speed up the creation of surface models by providing highly dense, accurate point clouds from which to construct digital surfaces. The scanner is being used to measure car bodies, interiors and clay model prototypes, the resulting data is then imported into a CAD system and converted into surfaces. Previously, Daimler had been using a coordinate measuring machine (CMM) and mechanical digitiser to capture the same information, but this proved to be less accurate and very labour intensive. While Daimler uses electronic Catia models as the masters for development of new vehicle designs, clay models are still used extensively, especially early in the design process. Conceptual designs are modelled in Alias/Wavefront’s industrial design software, Studio. Clay models are then sculpted from the Studio models and designers physically fine-tune the clay models until they have the precise shape they want. This shape must then be captured digitally for import to Catia.