How to Orient a 3D Scan for Machining

In this blog post, we’ll take a look at a scanned part in Geomagic Wrap and show how we can correct its orientation to prepare it for CNC machining. Very often, when we scan parts their orientation is not necessarily known. It could be skewed off plane relative to the angle that the scanner was used when the scans were taken.

By cycling through some various orthographic views, you may find that your scan is pretty far out in terms of being square to the plane. In order to take a model like this into Mastercam to generate toolpaths for machining, it would be necessary to square it up.

To do that, first, go into the Features menu and hoover over Planes.

Wrap has a very useful feature called Best Fit Planes.

In this example, we selected the triangles on the top face and then selected Apply Best Fit. This produces a plane that is best fit to the top surface.

Using this method, we were able to define several more planes which can be seen under features (shown below).

The top plane is labeled plane 1. We also have two side planes, as well as the opposite side plans representing the front and the back. Finally, we have the Center planes. These are actually referred to as 2 plane averages.

Plane 6 is the average of the two side walls. And Plane 7 is the average of the front and back walls.

To create orientation, go to the Alignment tab, and then Align to World. (also known as the world coordinate system).

We took plane 1 and aligned to the XY plane. We then took XZ plane and mapped that to plane 6 which is the first center plane. Then we took the YZ plane and mapped to plane 7.

Now, back into Wrap with the planes turned off, the geometry in the XY plane is pretty square.

Even rotating to YZ or the XZ the part is still nice and square.

If we were to transfer into Mastercam now it would utilize the top face as Z zero surface centered on the XY plane. This will save programmers valuable time when preparing the part for machining. Please be sure to sign up for our 2 Minute Tuesday video series to receive tips and tricks like this one in video form every week. More info at the button below.