The aftermarket industry is rapidly growing thanks to new tools to help with CAD design. 3D printing, 3D Scanning and CAD software can make designing and prototyping parts quick, making items take only hours to make instead of days. Now, making custom aftermarket parts or improved designs to existing items is much more accessible for all sizes of business. If you're looking to modify parts, or design new ones around existing geometry, having a 3D scan should be the first step

3D scanning provides a great way to capture items so it can be change in a modeling software. Whether its a big or small object, once an object is a mesh (the file made from a scan) you can manipulate it using sculpting tools or other editing CAD capabilities. A scaled down 3D printed driftwood sitting on top the 3D scanned driftwood. This is incredibly useful when you want to scale a part for 3D printing or create a CnC tooling from it. Mesh files can be scaled to different

Learn the different methods of converting 3D scans to CAD models so you can modify, print, or machine new parts.

In this blog, we'll be walking you through the basic workflow from taking a freshly made sculpture from 3D scanning to 3D printing.