From the course: 3D Scanning: From Mesh to Model

Tools and cost discussion - Fusion 360 Tutorial

From the course: 3D Scanning: From Mesh to Model

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Tools and cost discussion

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- Whenever you're starting on any project, you do want to know how much it's going to cost you. This training session will talk about tools that keep the cost as low as possible. We have several different stages for how to do reverse engineering using 3D models, that is, getting the scan, processing or repairing the scan, and then moving that scan into a reverse engineering tool. As I said in the previous video, you can spend quite a bit amount of money on 3D tools, whether that be very expensive 3D scanners, the reconstructions of those scans into 3D models can also cost you, and then the solid modeling and reverse engineering software. I will be using a combination of free and paid tools in this class, and I'll tell you which one I'm using when. The free tools will cost you nothing more than some photographs with your cell phone to create 3D models through a process called photogrammetry. If you want to move up into more paid solutions, there are cloud providers that do a better job at photogrammetry, at maybe around $10 per reconstruction. Or you can go up to using some of the scanners that I'll show you later in the class, one of which is the Artec Spider, that is about $20,000 for the scanner, and then the software for reconstruction and workflow is actually on top of that. After we get the scan, we need to repair it. I'll be using a tool entitled Autodesk Meshmixer, which is free, and again, I will put links to all of this in later parts of the class when I introduce these pieces of software more specifically. But we have Autodesk Meshmixer for scan repair, and then once the scan is nice and aligned, and nice and good for reverse engineering purposes, we're going to bring that into a piece of software entitled Autodesk Fusion 360. Fusion 360 is low-cost or some cost, I'll explain that. I'll also explain it later when I introduce Fusion 360 and where to download it. But Fusion 360 is free for hobbyists, and free for commercial use, until your company makes over $100,000 per year, and then Autodesk requires that you get a license after a 30-day trial period. That license, though, is somewhere around $50 or $55 per month, which is in stark contrast to other professional solid modeling software that might cost $8,000 to $12,000 per license. All of this is fairly accessible, I will show you free alternatives to all of the above, even Fusion 360 later in the class, but the workflow that I have is very straightforward in that there's very little cost up until the Fusion 360 step, and then you can decide if $50 a month is worth it for you, not only for the reverse engineering aspects of Fusion 360, but also for the highly capable solid modeling tools as well. I have a class also on Fusion 360, and also on Autodesk Meshmixer, so I would invite you to look for those classes as well because they will give you a good foundation, not for the reverse engineering part, that's what we'll be covering in this class, but for all of the other things that those tools can do. All right, let's get started.

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