Pre-alpha

JDLSCAN with five aligned scans of the current job: a Land Cruiser HDJ100 underbody, a ZF 8HP70 gearbox, a 79-series transfer case and the bellhousing, with a fitted flat face and bore — The current job: five scans aligned, a flat face and a 250 mm bore fitted, the adapter plate extruded. Open full size

Reverse engineering software for large scans.

Align, section, sketch and fit directly on multi-gigabyte scan data, then export a true STEP. Built in our own workshop, for our own jobs. Pre-alpha; alpha testing with a small group is next.

Follow the development.

A$1,400: One-time purchase. Optional yearly upgrades. No subscription.
20 million triangles: The scans it is built for.
STEP export: True BREP: faces, holes, bodies.
Pre-alpha: In daily use on our own jobs.

Why it exists

The tools that do this cost more each year than the scanner. Our jobs run to 20-million-triangle scans, so we built one that keeps up. Whether it becomes a product is up to the people on this list.

Working today

On a real job, today

Datum alignment — by features, datum planes and square-up.
Mesh sectioning — cuts on any plane, with smoothing, straight into a sketch.
Sketch tools — line, circle, arc, trim, fillet, offset, project, dimension, constraints.
Hole fitting — bores fitted from the scan as true circles; concentricity and distance.
Solid modelling — extrude, multi-area extrude, loft; bodies follow the scan.
STEP export — faces and holes as BREP.
Large meshes — 20-million-triangle scans; reduce, weld, fill holes.
Fusion assemblies — every body and scan in place, through our bridge.
SpaceMouse — 3Dconnexion supported.

In development

Being built now

Auto Surface — primitives first, then a NURBS surface over the freeform remainder, exported as BREP. Measured on a transfer-case scan: 74 faces, 99% of the area.

Primitive extraction on very large scans, at reasonable memory.

Planned

In order

1CMM import
2Direct scanner capture (SHINING 3D FreeScan first)
3CAM
4FEA
5Sheet-metal nesting

Development log

As it happened

STEP export, driven for real

Export STEP writes true BREP — faces and holes — with every face validated first. First export of the adapter job: 49 shapes, 10 MB, opens in Fusion.
Faces come from the scan under the body; the sub-mesh is welded, so a face is one loop.
Holes are cut from their faces. Self-crossing cylinder trims build clean: 76 of 76 valid.
Licence model settled and tested: buy once, activate per machine, offline after that. A shared key on a third machine is refused.

Auto Surface: understand the part first

The part is mapped before any fitting: flat, cylindrical and freeform regions, and which ones touch. Transfer-case crop: 57 regions.
Each region is fitted at its own density.
Result: 74 faces, all valid, 99% of the scanned area, written to STEP and read back.
Freeform regions fit to about 0.06 mm.
Next: the button in the app.

Square up, and smoother sections

Square up: click a scanned face, click a plane or axis, read the angle, press Enter.
The angle shows before anything moves; datum planes are clickable; a locked scan says so.
Section smoothing: fewer points, a smoothed run, clean sketch lines from rough edges.
A gap setting closes boundaries the scan left open, so the region extrudes.
Extrude several areas at once; edit the areas of an existing extrusion.

Measure, move and section controls on the part

Measure gives distance, X, Y, Z and angle on every measurement; concentricity between bores.
Real geometry beats the datum planes under the cursor; clicked points stay visible.
Section depth is a slider on the part. Move and rotate share one control.
Deleted bodies stay deleted.

Clicks land where you click

Picking on large scans is exact: it had been a median 36.6 mm off, from three faults, all fixed at the root.
The first click in the face and cylinder tools is instant, down from 25 seconds.
A sketch is tagged to the part it was drawn on, by distance.
Region finding on a 69-line sketch: 58 extrudable areas, up from 2.
Snap anywhere along a section cut.