3D Scan to AutoCAD

[akaterr55]

Hi All,

Our company buys items that our vendors either cannot or will not supply AutoCAD drawings of (much less 3D models), so I've been looking around for a 3D scanner, one that in a perfect world can scan straight into AutoCAD.  

Since our purchased parts are no bigger than a person, a handheld scanner seems like a good fit.  

There's a handheld one by XYZ that looks promising, but would require saving to an STL, then importing that into acad.  I don't know though if XYZ is really just wanting to sell you a 3D printer, which is not really what I'm after.

This is still in the research stage, so right now I'm just looking around.

Any ideas, suggestions, shared experience, would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[RobDraw]

More than likely you will need some 3rd party software for importing into AutoCAD.

[akaterr55]

Do you use a 3D scanner? If so, what kind of hardware/software?
Looks like everybody and their dog is selling them, but I don't see much on anyone that's actually using them to get models into AutoCAD.
Like I said I'm in the shopping around stage and am looking for advice.
Definitely don't want something that takes a big production to get a part into AutoCAD, but rather something more like let's see that part, yeah, here let's just scan that in...

[pkolarik]

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@akaterr55 wrote:

Hi All,

Our company buys items that our vendors either cannot or will not supply AutoCAD drawings of (much less 3D models), so I've been looking around for a 3D scanner, one that in a perfect world can scan straight into AutoCAD.  

Since our purchased parts are no bigger than a person, a handheld scanner seems like a good fit.  

There's a handheld one by XYZ that looks promising, but would require saving to an STL, then importing that into acad.  I don't know though if XYZ is really just wanting to sell you a 3D printer, which is not really what I'm after.

This is still in the research stage, so right now I'm just looking around.

Any ideas, suggestions, shared experience, would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

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 Inventor, which comes bundled with Autodesk's suite of products (at least, for the moment) can open .STL files. You should easily be able to export that as a file format that is usable from AutoCAD.