Railworks America

I got to see a demonstration of a FARO arm 3d laser scanner today. It scanned a complex part with ridges, depressions, curves, holes, etc. and rendered it perfectly in CAD. You could easily do the same with a model locomotive or railcar; could that CAD then be used to make a playable model in Railworks?

pkz19 wrote:I got to see a demonstration of a FARO arm 3d laser scanner today. It scanned a complex part with ridges, depressions, curves, holes, etc. and rendered it perfectly in CAD. You could easily do the same with a model locomotive or railcar; could that CAD then be used to make a playable model in Railworks?

The mesh from the CAD file would have to be cleaned up in a program like Blender.

I make my meshes in a 3d engineering program, ProE.

I process them through Blender to clean up the meshes and add textures. Here is a building I made.



It is just faster for me to make meshes with a 3d parametric engineering program due to having use ProE in my former life.

Not straight forward but yeah.

Harold

In the demonstration I saw, they were able to make the mesh very sharp after the scan. Not sure what software they were using but I could find out. So I am still not clear; would a high quality CAD file make it easier to build a locomotive? Using CAD to make buildings is one thing, they are basically just a combination of flat surfaces. The surfaces of a locomotive are much more complex.

pkz19 wrote:In the demonstration I saw, they were able to make the mesh very sharp after the scan. Not sure what software they were using but I could find out. So I am still not clear; would a high quality CAD file make it easier to build a locomotive? Using CAD to make buildings is one thing, they are basically just a combination of flat surfaces. The surfaces of a locomotive are much more complex.

Everything is designed now using CAD, a locomotive isn't that complex.



The meshes just have to be optimised outside of the engineering CAD program.

Harold

As an avid SolidWorks user myself, I've had some degree of luck exporting to blender as .STL files, but I don't know a thing about Blender. It makes the CAD programs look easy with all the Blender tutorials out there.

hminky wrote:

pkz19 wrote:In the demonstration I saw, they were able to make the mesh very sharp after the scan. Not sure what software they were using but I could find out. So I am still not clear; would a high quality CAD file make it easier to build a locomotive? Using CAD to make buildings is one thing, they are basically just a combination of flat surfaces. The surfaces of a locomotive are much more complex.

Everything is designed now using CAD, a locomotive isn't that complex.



The meshes just have to be optimised outside of the engineering CAD program.

Harold

Ok, let me rephrase my question. Would having access to a high quality 3D scan/CAD file of a locomotive make it easier/faster to build it as a virtual model for RW?

Depends on how many vertices are created via such an import. I asume far too many.
Don't ask me about the highest number, I do not build locos, but TS seems to be more robust like proposals from the DevDocs specify.

To answer your question, I don't think such a scan would help.
Model engines and rolling stock are rarely exact, small details such as hinges, rivets, nuts, handrails, etc. are usually too large.
Also too many vertices and little control over individual meshes.
Cleaning the resulting mess would probably be more work than starting from scratch with a reasonably good technical drawing.

I've been designing my 3d parts to a locomotive using CAD/CAM Software and then I'd import them as a mesh and lower the poly count and clean up the surfaces...