User manual

2. Using IDEA

This chapter describes how to use IDEA the software to create a digital model of a physical object. With

version 1.1 of IDEA is now possible to use the Turn Table which allows for a very high degree of automation

during the acquisition and generation of the digital model. The process to conﬁgure the scanner and digitize

an object is subdivided in four main steps:

1. optical set-up and calibration (Sect. 2.1)

: relates to the physical conﬁguration of the scanner to

operate with a speciﬁc working area. It is subdivided in two steps:

(a) Optical set-up (Sect. 2.1.1)

: once the scanning area is chosen, the position and the orientation

of the cameras, together with their focus, are to be conﬁgured;

(b) Calibration of the optical head (Sect. 2.1.2)

: allows obtaining the scanner’s operational param-

eters for the chosen scanning area;

2. Acquisition and alignment (Sect. 2.2)

: explains the acquisition methods and how to activate the

alignment tool; if available the turn table, it introduces its calibration that allows the automatic

alignment of object to be scanned placed on the turn table;

3. Preparation to the model generation (Sect. 2.3)

: describes what actions need to be performed prior

to the 3D model generation; such as the optimization of each individual scan’s alignment, the use of

the cleaning tools for the range images,and the optimization of the alignment between scans;

4. Generating a model (Sect. 2.4)

: describes the operations linked to the generation of the triangle

meshes.

2.1 Optical set-up

Scan in a box can be set to operate on the scanning areas the user chooses. Setting the scanner to operate on

a speciﬁc work area is easy because it just depends on the distance between the scanner and the object. The

Table 2.1 displays a list of scanning areas and their relative work distance to which the scanner has to be

placed in order to work.

Together with the scanner is provided a calibration master that has to be used for the optical setup and the

consequent calibration. Once chosen the working area one has to place the master as apart from the scanner

as referred to in Table 2.1 and orient it so that it will be framed frontally (ref. Figure 1.4). The calibration

master has 3 different patterns which are to use based on the cho- sen scanning area (ref. Figure 2.2 and

Table 2.2). At this stage, the scanner can be conﬁgured to operate in the chosen scanning area.