Quote Originally Posted by davide445 View Post
Wrap and Design are in the $Nx000 range as I understood, something more than we want to invest for a start, considering this is not the company primary business but a new line of services we need to develop both as leads and skills.
Interested to know options with pricing on par or below Rhino/Modo + plugins. Also interested to know the sw pipeline for different usage of the point cloud, solid modelling for CAD and printing and polygonal for animation and presentation.
Wrap is (in my opinion) the best software for turning your point cloud into a mesh and basic mesh alterations. The David software will also do this however, and to start with I agree it's an avoidable expense for reverse engineering applications. Wrap does an auto surfacing function which has its occasional uses.

Rhino with T-Splines add-on is a great affordable option for surfacing scan data.

For solid modelling we use Spaceclaim. Solidworks etc. will all work as well, but Spaceclaim hands itself nicely to Scan Data and in my experience is by far the quickest for producing results. In a standard CAD package you're purely using the scan data as a template. Cut planes through it, sketch around the curvature and extrude up to them. Spaceclaim will let you snap up to a mesh point, but you want to be working to design intent. Use the scan for the shape data and as a reference but use other metrology tools for taking critical dimensions. You have to be careful with programs like Design X that you don't make the height of your object 9.9374mm tall and all the planes off by 0.2 degrees.

With Spaceclaim there is a 3D scanning module (Geomagic capture) but it was over £5k and it's seldom we use it (though it does have lots of point cloud to mesh and mesh alteration features, which if you don't have wrap...) The 3D printing module can be very useful when working directly in meshes for merging meshes and using solid geometry for cutters (scanning something, filling the holes, and then cutting clean ones out before printing.) This is part of the standard spaceclaim license which could prove useful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sesc4ZrZ9fo