Scan object to generate 3D CAD file
Step 1: Chose the parts of the boot where you want to attach your housings. We chose the parts shaded blue in picture A because putting our housings at those two points would not impede the skier’s range of motion and because these two places had enough surface area to make a big enough point of contact between the boot and the housings, allowing for a more secure connection.
Step 2: Once you have decided where you want the housings to go, take a spare, identical boot and a jigsaw to cut out the parts of the boot where the housings would attach. Make sure that the parts you cut out are less than a foot tall and less than 9 inches wide, so as to assure that the entire part will fit in the Matter and Form 3D scanner.
Step 3: Download the necessary Matter and Form 3D scanner software for free off the company’s website and plug the scanner into your computer.
Step 4: Open the Matter and Form program on your computer and place the calibration cube (shown in picture B) in the center of the rotating scanning plate when prompted by the software. This will assure that you will get a more accurate, detailed scan of your parts.
Step 5: Once the scanner is done calibrating, the scanner’s software will prompt you to place the parts you desire to scan on the rotating scanning plate and tell the software to begin scanning.
Step 6: Once the scan is completed, upload the scan file to Fusion 360. When you open the file on Fusion 360, the part will not have the multi-triangle surface that it does in picture C. To get the multi-triangle surface, select the scan by highlighting it. Then go to the “sculpt” pull-down menu on the Fusion 360 toolbar and select “Mesh” and choose to change the surface of the part to “T-Spline.”
Step 7: Create a new design on Fusion 360 and create a cube with the dimensions of the height and width you wish to make your connection surface between the housing and the boot.
Step 8: Go back to your reworked scan file, and in your design library on the left hand side of the Fusion 360 page, right click on the cube and select “insert into current design.”
Step 9: Once the cube is in the same frame as the reworked scan, align the cube so that the cube where you want the housing to be placed. Make sure that there is overlap between the two parts. The surface area of the scan that the cube overlaps is going to drive the cut made to the cube.
Step 10: Go to the toolbar and click the “modify” pull-down menu. Choose “combine,” select the cube for the “target body” and the scanned part for the “tool body.” For the choice of “operation” select “cut.” Click ok and the cube should now have a side with a surface that matches the surface of the scanned part like shown in picture D.
