CAD Forum

Hi, I’m new to this forum so let me know if I’m in the wrong topic.

Soon my company is supplying me with the latest solid works which I’m familiar with.

I’m trying to plan in advance to create 2D accurate drawings of the templates we use for creating our carbon fibre parts.
These are sometimes very complex paper templates and can be quite large. Sometimes over 1.5 m wide.

I need to find some way to take these templates and import them into solid works, scale them and send them off to a company who cuts the pre-preg carbon to shape.

I’ve tried a camera before but have had trouble with lens distortion with large templates.

Does anyone have any smart ideas that could help me out.

I’d really appreciate any input.

Cheers,
CWaz

My first thought is a large format scanner. There are companies that will do the scanning for you, or you can purchase your own scanner for not too much money. Having said that, most of what I find is limited to 60" wide, but I assume the templates can be folded for scanning, and then stitched back together in software.

Thanks, sounds viable. Was hoping to do minimal stitching and processing as I have 5+ templates for each mould. 100+ mounds /:

I bet the scanning services would do the stitching for you, but you will pay for that service.

I can imagine the price would be quite significant as I have so many templates.

I think I’ve could’ve came up with something. If I position a square wire mesh over the template I can use that as reference. I’d import the image into photoshop or some image processor and fix the distortion. The mesh would also help hold the template flat. I’d position the camera perpendicular on some sort of frame.

Any thoughts?

I think services for 60-inch-wide scanning are not all that uncommon. At least get a quote. Someone like https://www.e-arc.com/large-format-scanning-services/.

Dwight

If you do end up going with the wire mesh method, the further away you can get your camera the less distortion you'll have. If you can manage a long distance, high resolution, and high optical zoom you should be able to get pretty minimal distortion.

Why not invest in a hand held 3D scanner? If you place your template on a flat high contrast surface (black on white or white on black) I would think even a low end scanner would easily pick up the edges an give you an accurate STL file that could be brought in to SOLIDWORKS. You really just need the outside edges and the edges of any internal cutouts.