Point clouds in Inventor

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Agnes
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Point clouds in Inventor

Post by Agnes »

Hi Guys,

I am currently working in a company which uses Inventor for design. They use it as well to model parts from point cloud. Unfortunately, Inventor is very cumbersome with point clouds. No option to create section, every crop needs to be saved.....the list is long. I am looking for a plug-in for Inventor which could help to interrogate point cloud for accurate as-built modelling. I hope you know some.

Thank you for any suggestions and help.
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Re: Point clouds in Inventor

Post by melshy »

You can check with geomagic X then export stp, step, sat… to inventor
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Re: Point clouds in Inventor

Post by chris_d »

Hi Agnes,

You might look at https://reverseengineering.com/inventor.html
I am not familiar with any of these products; however, it is the only plugin for Inventor that came up in my quick search.

Are the scans architectural (building or large structure)?
If so, Revit may be of more use to you as a reverse engineering tool.

Melshy mentions Geomagic X (I assume this is a reference to Design X) which is a reverse engineering tool for objects or parts.
The Inventor plugin link above also seems more object or part related.

The distinction between large scale (building or structure) and small scale (object or part) is important as reverse engineering tools in either application are relative to the needs of the related industry (architectural or engineering).
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Re: Point clouds in Inventor

Post by scankukai »

Hello,

You can try ScanSap to quickly clip areas of the point cloud and export them as separate Autodesk Recap files.
The workflow is extremely fast.
You won't need to load the whole point cloud in Inventor.

https://en.taglabs-solutions.com/scansap

Several industries are using ScanSap with great results.
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Re: Point clouds in Inventor

Post by Mike Annear »

Hi Agnes,
If you cant find a solution for Inventor, try Rhino 3D.
I use it for all of my modelling tasks.
https://www.rhino3d.com/features/
I believe it is the cheapest, easiest and most versatile Pointclouds-to-Model solution available.
It will import standard e.57 files, add the "Veesus for Rhino" plugin and you have some true power to play with.
https://veesus.com/veesus-arena4d-rhino/
Rhino is also highly compatible with most other CAD packages with dozens of import-export formats.
Mike.
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Agnes
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Re: Point clouds in Inventor

Post by Agnes »

yankoch wrote: Sun Sep 18, 2022 9:45 pm Hello,

You can try ScanSap to quickly clip areas of the point cloud and export them as separate Autodesk Recap files.
The workflow is extremely fast.
You won't need to load the whole point cloud in Inventor.

https://en.taglabs-solutions.com/scansap

Several industries are using ScanSap with great results.
Thank you for your answer Yankoch. I think that the same we do now using Recap. We can crop the point cloud and load to Inventor much smaller chunk but it still doesn't sort the problem with point cloud interrogation (sections, changing colour to normals etc). Just to explain cropping point cloud is possible in Inventor itself as well but it is a bit limited.

Thank you
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Re: Point clouds in Inventor

Post by Agnes »

Mike Annear wrote: Sun Sep 18, 2022 10:23 pm Hi Agnes,
If you cant find a solution for Inventor, try Rhino 3D.
I use it for all of my modelling tasks.
https://www.rhino3d.com/features/
I believe it is the cheapest, easiest and most versatile Pointclouds-to-Model solution available.
It will import standard e.57 files, add the "Veesus for Rhino" plugin and you have some true power to play with.
https://veesus.com/veesus-arena4d-rhino/
Rhino is also highly compatible with most other CAD packages with dozens of import-export formats.
Mike.
Hi Mike,
Thank you for you suggestion. I have heard of Rhino but it is not up to me what app we are using. I need to use what is available in the company which is Inventor, Recap, Autocad, generally Autodesk I am afraid. Not ideal but not much I can do about it.

Thank you
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Re: Point clouds in Inventor

Post by Agnes »

chris_d wrote: Sun Sep 18, 2022 9:17 pm Hi Agnes,

You might look at https://reverseengineering.com/inventor.html
I am not familiar with any of these products; however, it is the only plugin for Inventor that came up in my quick search.

Are the scans architectural (building or large structure)?
If so, Revit may be of more use to you as a reverse engineering tool.

Melshy mentions Geomagic X (I assume this is a reference to Design X) which is a reverse engineering tool for objects or parts.
The Inventor plugin link above also seems more object or part related.

The distinction between large scale (building or structure) and small scale (object or part) is important as reverse engineering tools in either application are relative to the needs of the related industry (architectural or engineering).
Hi Chris,
Thank you for your answer. The industry is mostly engineering. We work on refineries so we deal mostly with pipes, steel structures etc. Some elements are manufactured by us. Whenever we have anything of bigger scale where information about the 3D elements is not needed (so plain 3D drawing) we use Autocad.
I am not looking for new standalone app as it is not up to me to introduce new applications. I was hoping rather for an app which would help with point cloud interrogation within Inventor.
I used to use Revit and would say is better for architectural purposes than what we would need it for.

Thank you for help
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Re: Point clouds in Inventor

Post by pipingdesigner »

We work on refineries so we deal mostly with pipes, steel structures etc
My experience is that if you are using an AutoCAD product for this type of work it would be Plant 3D, not Inventor.

Plant 3D has at least some basic point cloud management tools and you can get a relatively inexpensive plugin to enhance the existing tools.
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