This project was a little different to our usual structural steel projects in that the job was to reverse engineer the existing structure from the point cloud data provided by the customer.
The point cloud data was uploaded into the point cloud software – “normals” were then computed (this takes a long time and is very pc intensive). At that stage the scan data was ready to import into solidworks.
With the newly created mesh imported into Solidworks we could use the powerful “create surface from mesh” feature to give us some useable surfaces as reference points.
From that point it was a 3D modelling / design engineering exercise. While recreating the structure we took note of any areas that may need improvement and made adjustments to ensure that the 3D model would allow “workable” 2D manufacturing drawings to be produced.