© 2009 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Rapidform is used for scientific research every day, but rarely does it help with such an important discovery as this: ancient human footprints found in Kenya reveal that our ancestors had similar height, weight and walking patterns to us.  Matthew Bennett of Bournemouth University in the UK used a 3D scanner to capture these fossilized footprints and studied them with Rapidform.  You can read the news about this fascinating case or examine the paper published in Science, replete with various Rapidform-generated images.

Professor Bennett performed a variety of measurements of the footprints using Rapidform, and generated beautiful color maps showing the depth of each footprint in the prehistoric mud.  The cover of the Feb 27, 2009 issue of Science featured one of these color maps made in Rapidform. This important research made worldwide headlines because the findings represent the oldest evidence of modern-human foot anatomy.

This is another great example of how 3D scanning is being applied to all sorts of important work, from anthropology and medicine to manufacturing and new product development.

Source: Science Magazine [login required to read full article]

If you have been using XOR for reverse engineering and XOV for inspection, sometimes you may be confused why the results of deviation by the Accuracy Analyzer of XOR and Whole Deviation of XOV are different. As you know, XOR is the software for reverse engineering and XOV is the software for inspection. Even though you try to calculate deviation using the same Design data and Scan data, the results would be different because of the difference in calculation method as shown in the image below.

Through this technical tip, you will understand how these two applications calculate deviation and why the results of deviation are different.

Difference in calculation method

Whole Deviation of XOV is focused for checking how much the scanned points are close to the nominal data. So the application measures the gap that the scanned points have among the nominal data. In other words, the application tries to project the scanned points onto the nominal data and calculates its gap as shown in the image below.

But the Accuracy analyzer of XOR is focused on checking how much the modeled data, which is designed by several reverse engineering tools, is close to the real scanned object. So the application measures gap that the modeled data have among the real scanned object. In other words, the application tries to tessellate modeled data so that it can project it onto the scanned data and then it calculates the gap as shown in the image below.

Since our interest of deviation calculation is different in both applications, the results of deviation are calculated in a different manner based on the respective interest.

Note

You can see the difference in the results of deviation in XOR by setting the modeled data as reference in Mesh Deviation (Measure > Mesh Deviation).