The Bantam Jeep

The Bantam Jeep, the original prototype Jeep from Bantam, is being restored by a group of amateur military historians, and 3rd generation modeling with Geomagic Design X is making it all possible.
Mike Raphael is an advisor to the 3D Scanning conference, and owns Direct Dimensions (www.directdimensions.com); one of the premier scanning service bureaus in the USA. As such, he has the luxury of selecting from all the major point-processing software packages. Direct Dimensions knew that the 2nd generation process of Scans to Polygon Mesh to NURBS surfaces would take a lot of time to propogate all the imperfections on this vehicle (where the chute didn’t open) and years of wear and tear. But Direct Dimensions also knows about Geomagic Design X.

Design X enables Direct Dimensions to generate perfected parametric CAD models from imperfect scan data of a bent, field-worn vehicle. Geomagic Design X’s unique 3rd generation process eliminates the Polygon mesh and the NURBS steps enabling Direct Dimensions to model parametric CAD models directly from the point data.

Original Bent Frame of Jeep ready for scanning

This saves time but also gives the operator the means to “model out” the dents, bends and other imperfections, and create a CAD model. With accurate CAD models, the customer is able to reproduce the “design intent” with a fully native CAD model in Solidworks, complete with the history tree.

SOLIDWORKS CAD model generated directly from the Geomagic Design X software and 3D scans