There doesn’t seem to be much technology can’t accomplish. It’s really quite amazing. Recently, the US Marine Corps contracted with EMS to use 3D scanning technology to capture data about the Land Assault Vehicle or LAV. Five LAV’s in all were scanned to create CAD models of these vehicles.
The US Marine Corps initially approached EMS because they needed 3D models of their LAVs. These models were going to be used to develop simulation software and training programs. Initially, they were going to measure the LAVs themselves and make the CAD models from scratch. However, it was determined that this would be way too time-consuming and wouldn’t produce a quality final result. That’s when 3D scanning was brought on board.
EMS went out to the California desert and scanned five different versions of the LAV. They used both the Konica Minolta and Z-Corps 3D scanning systems to accomplish this task. They scanned both the interior and exterior of all the different LAV models. This allows them to get into every little nook and cranny of the vehicles. This would’ve been much too difficult to measure by hand and to reproduce by hand and import into modeling software. Once the scanning was complete, both the interior and exterior scans were combined to create a full 3D model.