----- Forwarded message from Scott Anderson -----
Date: Wed, 2 May 2012 17:35:35 -0400
From: Scott Anderson
Reply-To: Scott Anderson
Subject: RE: Alternatives to Geomagic (UNCLASSIFIED)
To: morphmet@morphometrics.org
Hi I'm a former Rapidform sales manager with background in Bioengineering and
of course 3D measurement and analysis, and have been subscribed to the post for
about a month now and it's quite interesting. I'd bet there are no other
Rapidform sales guys watching this, but I could be wrong, and I don't think
this post will harm the competition in the EDU market at all by sharing. Based
on my experience I thought I'd chime in with the pricing information that I do
know about, it might be helpful, and this might only be applicable in the USA.
I really like academic research, and as a former salesperson I've seen a lot of
good uses of 3D data go stale because of the cost of software was too high.
As of late 2011, in the Americas --
- Rapidform Academic Software is offered as a Lab License.
- You can't just buy 1 license, you but a whole labs worth of licenses that can
be checked-out, put on laptops, or taken to the field, etc.
- This is all available (a lot of licenses) for the same price that can be used
throughout the department or research institute.
I recommend contacting all of the local vendors, it probably won't be too tough
to find out the price (which I won't mention here).
Technically speaking, my application experience is with Rapidform, but it's
worthwhile to mention some impressive capability beyond simple mesh
reconstruction (which is powerful), and which might be use in
mopho-applications.
>From the website, you'd think all of the uses of Rapidform are in cleaning up
>meshes or designing/analyzing car-parts/airplane-parts. These are the best
>applications of Rapidform (and the ones that probably still bring in the most
>business). Here are some uses for bio/morpho-apps which I've personally been
>a part of and can vouch for...
Mesh/Cleanup
- batch mesh cleanup/optimization
- really messy CT mesh data (with internal cavities and geometry) --> clean
mesh. Efficient, robust and fast. Imagine raw STL from a CT of a spine being
made watertight for RP in about 1/2 hour.
- quality/accuracy control is built-in to every app - so you can check how much
you've smoothed data out
- other applications of really messy/noisy data being made accurate (verifiably
accurate) and manifold without much manual work.
Modeling for CAE
- surfaces (including autosurfaces) have better topology (edge connection) if
the surface/solid kernal is robust, which it is because it is Parasolid surface
kernal, meaning that the surfaces have little/no trouble in a CAE analysis
package.
- making surface/solid models from incomplete meshes -- can skip doing a lot of
clean up in a lot of cases.
- mechanical models (of course, this is Rapidform's forte)
Analysis
- batch alignment of multiple meshes/point clouds based on pre-defined weighted
free-form regions of mesh geometry. These selected regions drive the
alignment.
- the ability to apply multiple alignments and extract derivatives/analysis
based on individual alignments
- mesh averaging with some useful parameters and statistics to confirm the
efficacy of the average geometry
- extraction of parametric (associative) primitive geometry from ad-hoc
(freeform) definition of mesh regions
- batch, parametric analysis -- meaning you can change 1 parameter, press
start, grab a cup of coffee, and everything associatively and parametrically
recalculates. (all of the above behave nicely if you want to make any
modifications). This means you can test a lot of theories or analysis methods
easily without manually resetting everything (including modifying free-form
regions previously mentioned).
Support
- I used to support the product, so I'm going to say it's great, right?
Really, there are a lot of smart people there supporting the product and giving
good training and making meaningful software updates.
Note:
Most of the analysis (see Analysis points) require that the geometries are
relatively similar to one another (not drastically geometrically different) for
automation, but there are manual ways of processing data if the automation
fails, as you might expect. Also, most of the analysis automation requires a
starting model (example a geometric average of a lot of meshes is a good
starting model) in order to do the comparison and analysis. Therefore it's
best suited for analysis of multiple data sets.
I'm sure the other vendors will have good stories too, but I thought I'd share,
and I'll keep on watching this mail-feed!
Scott Anderson
(408) 836 4600
TeamPlatform
sco...@teamplatform.com
3D Data & Projects Come to Life on TeamPlatform
Upload and Share Today | www.TeamPlatform.com
-----Original Message-----
From: morphmet [mailto:morphmet_modera...@morphometrics.org]
Sent: Wednesday, May 02, 2012 1:50 PM
To: morphmet@morphometrics.org
Subject: Re: Alternatives to Geomagic (UNCLASSIFIED)
Correction as per Dr. Corner:
archit...@headus.com.au
should be
archi...@headus.com.au.
-the mod [dslice]
On 5/1/12 11:38 PM, morphmet_modera...@morphometrics.org wrote:
>
> ----- Forwarded message from "Corner, Brian D CIV (US)" -----
>
> Date: Tue, 1 May 2012 12:49:27 +0000
> From: "Corner, Brian D CIV (US)"
> Reply-To: "Corner, Brian D CIV (US)"
> Subject: Alternatives to Geomagic (UNCLASSIFIED)
> To: "morphmet_modera...@morphometrics.org"
>
> Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
> Caveats: NONE
>
> RapidForm is more expensive than GeoMagic, at least it was until GM
> raised its price. I’ve pretty much given up working with MeshLab,
> after spending a very frustrating afternoon trying to merge a couple
> very high density meshes. Too many crashes and quirks. In the 3d Lab
> here at the US Army Natick Soldier RDEC, we used CySlice and related
> software from Headus (http://www.headus.com.au/home). Headus is run by
> Phil Dench & Jill Smith (Perth, Australia) who started supporting
> Cyberware scan merging & editing way back when (1995-ish). Phil’s
> software is very useful and more-or-less user friendly (we call it
> Phil-friendly). He uses his own flavor of PLY which cannot be read by
> MeshLab, kind of a pain but we wrote a little converter we can share.
> His on-line & email support is superb. Price is reasonable and within
> the range of most grants. He has provided 30-day trials in the past.
> You may contact Headus through the above link or Phil directly at
> archit...@headus.com.au <http://mailto:archit...@headus.com.au>.
>
> For full disclosure, I have an on-going contract with Headus to
> support the software we purchased.
>
> Cheers,
>
> -bc
>
> *********************************************************
>
> Brian D. Corner, PhD
>
> Research Anthropologist
>
> WarSTAR
>
> US Army Natick Soldier RDEC
>
> Comm: 508-233-5317
>
> DSN: 256-5317
>
> **
>
> ***** Note new email address as of 25 April 2012 *****
>
> *brian.d.corner....@mail.mil*
>
>
> Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
> Caveats: NONE
>
>
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
>
>
>
--
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