How To Align A Scanned Mesh To Other Meshes /Features In Fusion 360

[@twinpeaksco4101]

that direct edit mode 3 point face was what I was looking for!!

[@Jason_Connolly]

Lots of great information there. I've often thought about the best way to align a transmission and engine, this will same me many hours. Thanks Matt

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Glad it was helpful! Keep in mind this is a work around of sorts. It can be done but it is less than ideal. But if you don't have a dedicated mesh program then a work around like this might be the only option.

[@Jason_Connolly]

@LearnEverythingAboutDesign Amazing to think that you could still get further accuracy. It's probably as good as I need for the accuracy I require and limited budget. Thanks again

[@Nixqy]

I just wanted to come to your most recent video to say, I have been going back and forth in your videos for the last couple of hours as ive been designing a re-direct duct for one of my A/C vents and the information ive gotten from your videos has easily reduced my working time on this by hours, im a fairly new Fusion360 user as previously i used blender for everything (mostly cause i knew it fairly well from previous projects) and just about anything that has more than 6 sides on it takes me a few hours to model lol - thank you for making these videos, they are fantastic.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Wow that is great to hear! Thanks for leaving the comment! Not sure if you saw but i do have a few older videos showing how to convert blender models to freeform models in Fusion. Might help if you have designs to port over.

[@joeltunbridge2328]

Awesome, this is great timing. I've just had a gearbox and a salvaged EV motor 3d scanned. I managed to botch the alignment by eye 😂. Thanks for the info!

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Glad it helped. Sounds like a fun project!

[@keal.vietnam]

Perfect Tutorial , thank you so much , can you make some tutorial Fusion 360 of mechanical movement series?

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Thanks Keal! I am working on some big changes at the moment and will announce them soon. I have some new series planned, one including assemblies/motion.

[@LOWFUEL]

Thanks, very interesting, I just found that using an already aligned STL is a bit confusing at the beginning.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Having it aligned before it comes into Fusion is 1000% recommended :) So if you are using shining exScan or some other mesh software and you can put the mesh aligned to XYZ i would do that. Most of the hobby/consumer scanners in the sub $2000 price range don't have the ability to do this unless you use some other software like Quick Surface, Geomagic or something else.

[@LOWFUEL]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign indeed, aligning before importing is perfect, except... I am indeed using a consumer scanner... No matter what, I was pretty sure there were a 3 points method and I found it in your video. Thanks for the list of softwares to do this, I will give it a look, I saw that Zeiss Suite does that, but only on Windows!

[@luis7899]

Hi Matt! this is a game changer. In many scenarios we import the mesh to be part of an assembly. so using this technique saves the extra step of having to align the mesh to the WCS in the scan software. correct? TIA

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Great to hear! I would still say you should align the mesh in the mesh software to a known orientation. It won't hurt down stream in CAD, but if you don't do it you might hate yourself later :) There are modeling approaches with assemblies where people will use a known coordinate system reference for everything. For example if I was modeling the engine and transmission, it would be possible to reference everything from a coordinate system that is common for all parts. I think that is an exception more than a rule. So in short. yes align in the mesh program if you can, it will help.

[@SUB13333]

Amazing! thx!

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Glad you like it!

[@jphalip]

Thanks for the great video. I was curious, do you have recommendations for scanners under or around $1K?

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

From the data that I have seen from some of the scanners, the Einstar output seems to be very good. I haven't tried one myself but if I were buying at that price point it would be my goto. I would check out the channel Making for Motorsport He has done a lot of videos with the revo pop2, einstar, the creality cr01 and the lizard. kzbin.info/www/bejne/o4rTnZmwqdWgrrc Note that with something like the Einstar you do still need a good computer to be able to handle it. Some of the smaller units that connect to a phone require less of a computer to drive the software. Things like the Ferret scanner from creality are around $300.

[@jphalip]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign great, thank you!

[@keenangodburn]

Man, id love to follow what's going on here but my origin is not well placed on my mesh which seemingly makes this impossible.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

its a bit of manual work to get it close sadly. There are tools in free software like GOM inspect that can help position it based on an origin. I don't have a vid on this channel about it but David at Making for Motorsport did cover it in one of his videos reverse engineering a spindle.

[@SUB13333]

one thing i don't understand. how do you align the mesh with the origins of the component? in your video it is aligned straight away.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

The original scan was done with ExScan and aligned there. I go over it in this video kzbin.info/www/bejne/fKWcooeMeLKqeZY There really isn't a good way to do this in Fusion. If you enter direct modeling of a mesh you are able to select points on a mesh and make a plane that way. But there are no tools specifically to help with that. I strongly suggest doing it in the scan software. If your software like revoscan doesn't have an alignment option, GOM inspect has a free version that lets you do this.

[@rifalse]

how to turn on direct edit mode :( there is no that option in my fusion

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

If you start with an imported model and history capture is off (no timeline at the bottom) it should always be in direct edit. When you have history on there should be a direct edit button in the mesh tools.