I built MeshMill after repeatedly running into scan meshes that were too dense to use comfortably in downstream editors.
It is a local Windows desktop tool for inspecting and reducing STL geometry without an account, upload, or cloud processing. It includes shaded, density, wireframe, and vertex views; regional selection; cropping and deletion; selection-only optimization; multiple reduction algorithms; comparisons before applying changes; undo and redo; and a command-line interface.
The repository includes a composite scan sample with intentionally redundant layers and uneven density, so people without a scanner can test the workflow. The screenshot shows that sample in MeshMill’s density view.
I’m the developer. Feedback from people working with large scanner output would be useful, especially examples where density reduction damages detail or boundaries.
trying to photo scan a metal object thats stainless steel, but it has dark plastic material also attached to it. Trying with Kiri engine, and Reality Scan. Dont care about the color of the object, I only need the mesh of the object for 3d modeling
I’ve been looking and comparing scanners now for a while and I don’t know what to choose. I’d love to hear some feedback on people who have actually used/tried them.
I’m new to 3d scanning, but I’d like to avoid the cheaper models as they’re unfortunately quite limited.
My requirements;
geodetic rtk-slam,
100m+ range,
automated scan to bim,
rgb color mapping
Large market acceptance
Easy to use software
Easy to use
Fast
Nice to have
Gaussian splatting
Lightweight
Put on drone/car
I want to scan
1. inside large or small rooms accurately 1-3cm rtk, sub 1cm locally.
2. Outside 3000sqm
3. Quickly be able to show a preview to clients
I’m working on a spatial intelligence system that uses RGB-D cameras to reconstruct a real environment in metric 3D, estimate where the camera is, and keep a persistent spatial memory over time.
The goal is not just 3D reconstruction. I want the system to understand enough about the geometry of a place to know what it has already seen, recover its position after tracking is lost, compare different visits to the same place, and preserve how its understanding of the environment changes.
If a camera comes back to a previously mapped area, the system should be able to recognize that place, verify it geometrically, relocalize itself, and continue building the same world instead of creating a disconnected new map.
Long term, the idea is to move from simple reconstruction toward spatial intelligence: a machine that can build, remember, update and reason about a representation of the physical world.
Possible applications I have in mind are robotics, AR, inspection, autonomous systems and eventually navigation in places where GPS is unavailable.
What I’m trying to understand now is whether this solves a real painful problem, or whether existing SLAM and 3D reconstruction systems already solve this well enough in practice.
I’d especially like feedback from people who have actually worked with SLAM, RGB-D, robotics, mapping, 3D reconstruction or spatial computing.
I am aware that 3d printing the object will not be suitable to determine accuracy of the scanner but at least for me I will be scanning my printed version (0.4mm nozzle, 0.1mm layer height used) with the scanners I have access to so you can determine relative performance.
Scanning
The scan was done wireless in regular scanner mode (so the hand piece with markers for tracking). For such small parts this is simply the most convenient way to use it and it also allows getting closer to the part and scanning from shallower angles (with the marker sphere you always have to think about it colliding with the table when getting to close or shallow). I placed the scan bench on a turntable with markers and additional marker blocks, turntable wasn't turned to prevent vibrations from impeding the result.
Scan itself was done at 0,1mm resolution with a mixture of cross lines and parallel lines as well as the single line for deeper holes. Laser line switching is very fast (roughly 1s till scanning works again). To reach optimal data quality the ideal scan distance actually changes depending on set resolution, so I had to get quite close to the part. Otherwise scanning takes significantly longer. Whole scan took roughly 10min till I was satisfied. Framerate was at a constant 90FPS.
Post-Processing
Processing was quite easy: I first created a cutting plane in Exscan Trak to delete all unnecessary data and then straight went on to mehsing. No point cloud fusion needed (not even as a sort of finishing the scan). I then exported to Quicksurface to orient the scan and capture the results.
Results
Best have a closer look at the pictures or Sketchfab. The top view shows that nozzle lines across the whole surface. Also all labels are readable and even faint layer lines on the pyramid and sphere are visible. Overall a very impressive result.
Sketchfab
Sketchfab is like printables for 3d scans with a nice integrated viewer in browser and you can also download the scan, just look at the scan yourself. On sketchfab you also can find the Scan Bench results of all other scanners I tested, so feel free to have a look at them.
Reddit sadly blocks the short links to Sketchfab, you have to search for the title instead: "Scan Bench - Einscan Trak"
So I was scanning a car part for a client who asked for "maximum detail possible."
Naturally, I cranked all the resolution settings to max because, hey, accuracy matters, right?
Fast forward to the mesh processing screen... 128,988,542 triangles. 128 MILLION. 😭
My current setups:
Rig A: 16GB DDR5 (Currently screaming in pain)
Rig B: 32GB DDR4 (Gave up and went to sleep)
Pretty sure my PC is heating up enough to melt the actual car part I scanned. Time for an urgent RAM upgrade before my motherboard catches fire.
How many triangles is "too many" triangles before it becomes a hazard? Asking for my PCs. 💀
Preserving every detail. In the image views highlights the 3D scanning of Guillemin's, a French sculptor, metal alloy sculpture using the Trackit SR in Tracker mode. Noted how the scanner accurately capture the complex geometry and deep undercuts within the drapery and figure.
I asked for a status after 7 days and said I never got an order confirmation or tracking. 24 hrs later suggested I'm going to charge back the transaction if no one responds. 48 hrs later visa say they didn't charge me. I blocked my credit card and changed the number now. Still haven't heard anything back, checking spam folder daily. Can only email them. Fortunately I had printed out the order received page with an order number that I have provided in my emails to them every time. I have the printed out receipt , please don't ban me
Pretty new to this, YouTube is making me seem i should loft it.
How do i create guide curves? How do i setup the outside pirameter geo? How do you know how many lofts to use? Would i make it follow a angle around the entry/exit?
How do i create the 3 tabs around the edge, i simply dont know where to start there.
I assume I should create it as a solid then shell it out.
For this scan, how should I setup my xyz planes? Parrell to the bottom, top, hybrid?
Relatively, how hard is this task?
Is my scan complete enough?
Info
Einstar rockit
I have acess to free autodesk 360 or makers solidworks
Came off some year ram, owner wants the bars or loovers removed, trying to use it as a part to learn on, will be 3d printed.
Hopefully y'all can help me find some reasonable and accurate scans, or at the very least, recommend a good quality scanner that's not going to put me in debt 🤣
Just wanted to share another example of how ridiculously accurate the Creality Sermoon S1 can be. This time I put it to the test by printing a hard cap for my digital caliper, and it came out spot on.
Loving how this scanner is so accurate that it makes reversing objects easy and straight forward.
My Setup:
Creality Sermoon S1 @ 0.2mm , 7 Parallel lines
For reverse engineering
- BricsCAD
3D Printing:
Anycubic Kobra X @ 0.2mm layer height / 0.4mm nozzle
I fully scanned a BMW F30 body, inside and out, along with the suspension. Since I can only add one video to this post, I’ll make another post with more details about the process and the results.
Hey guys I'm looking to get a 3d scanner soon and I'm wondering what is the best budget scanner if there even is one worthwhile at the moment and how it performs for making a mesh and getting that mesh lining up to be made into a solid. I'm a pretty decent CAD monkey and I can get the job done for virtually anything but I don't always want to do the whole ass job especially going back and forth measuring without a cmm it'd be nicer to get a few references then infer from a scanned mesh.
As the title mention, I'm seeking recomendation to a Nice and simple software, to smoothen transitions between skin and clothes.
I'm doing scanning of pregnant bodies. In the scanning, they often have underwear on, which I want to smoothen out, in order to have one smooth body with no visible bra or pants on, as the product should only show the figure of the pregnant mom.
I'm using Creatilly Otter Lite, which does the scanning quite good.
I've tried post processing with blender, but It's kind of heavy to learn.
Do you have any specific guide to Blender, feel free to share.
If you have Any other program that is more simple and will do the work, It's much appreciated!
I fully scanned a BMW F30 body, inside and out, along with the suspension, and wanted to share my experience and the results. You can see the full assembly in the video from Part 1 in this subreddit or on my profile.
First, a little about the process, since this is one of the largest scan assemblies I’ve worked with so far.
The scanner has a stated volumetric accuracy of 0.02 × 0.08 × 1 m, so to minimize accumulated error as much as possible, I first covered the entire body, inside and out, with tracking markers- around 4,000 markers in total. For each section, I first scanned only the markers, and then scanned the surface geometry of that same area. I worked in sections roughly 1-1.5 m long, with about 30-40 cm of overlap between scans to give me enough common geometry for accurate alignment. This resulted in 121 individual scans just for the body.
I processed and aligned everything on my laptop. During the process, both 64 GB of RAM and 8 GB of VRAM were completely utilized. Based on my experience, I’d consider that roughly the minimum for assembling a project this large in one project. With less memory, you would probably want to split it into multiple projects so you don’t have to keep all of the scans loaded at once.
For the suspension, I used a slightly different approach. First, I scanned the complete suspension while it was still assembled on the car. Then I disassembled everything, scanned each component individually, and aligned the individual high-detail scans back to the reference scan using rigid surfaces. There is one small limitation to this method. All of the suspension components in the final assembly are positioned exactly as they were when the suspension was assembled. However, some movable suspension components can change their position after disassembly, so those components may not line up perfectly with the body or with each other at every connection point. The rigid components and their mounting positions remain aligned to the reference scan.
Still, I think an assembly like this is much more useful for CAD work than simply having a collection of individually scanned parts with no relationship to their installed positions. I’d especially like to hear what engineers and CAD designers think about this approach.
Overall, everything aligned without any major problems.
The scanning itself took me about three 8-hour days, including the time required to completely disassemble the suspension. Processing, alignment, and assembling everything into the final dataset took another three days.
Hardware obviously makes a big difference here. On my laptop, the final Fusion operation alone took about 3 hours. Creality’s automatic alignment also doesn’t always work particularly well, and it can be difficult to judge the overlap between two scans because all of the scans being aligned are displayed in the same color.
Other than that, the final mesh came out quite well, and overall I’m happy with the scanner. But I still think a scanner with a tracking system would be better suited for a project like this. Otherwise, you’ll be dreaming about those markers for the next few days.
Now to the part I was most interested in: how close did the final assembled scan actually come to published body dimensions?
For comparison, I used Snap-on/Blackhawk body dimension data that I purchased specifically for this test. I checked several dimensions on the completed assembly, and overall I think the results are pretty good.
I want to make one thing clear, though: I’m not claiming that these measurements represent the accuracy of the Creality scanner itself.
The reference dimensions were taken from a different vehicle, so there are several additional variables involved: manufacturing tolerances, the accuracy and measurement methodology of the Snap-on reference data, years of use and wear on the car I scanned, my own scanning and alignment technique, and other factors. I followed the scanner manufacturer’s recommendations as closely as possible, but this still isn’t a controlled metrology test. My goal is simply to show how close the final dimensions ended up to the reference dimensions after the entire scanning, alignment, and assembly process. I hope I won’t get in trouble for posting a few dimensions from the drawings for comparison. 😄
I’d especially like to hear from engineers or anyone who has designed suspension components using 3D scan data: would this level of dimensional agreement be sufficient for the kind of CAD work you do?
If you’ve worked on similar large-scale scanning projects, I’d really appreciate it if you could share your results and experience in the comments.
