Parel Design Blog

2011-12-20T22:11:00.000-08:00

Work in progress: really need to save the iterations every 20 minutes or so...there were quite a few design iterations that I did not document.

2011-12-07T09:17:00.000-08:00

This workshop deals with how to work fast in a digital environment and create a sense of flow while using Photoshop and Solidworks. The main ideas here are to minimize unnecessary cursor movement and maximize muscle memory. Thanks to IDSA Kansas City Chapter as well as Wacom, Hallmark and Garmin for sponsoring this event. The above video has about 30minutes of theory at the beginning with more sketches through the last half.

http://thomasparel.com/2011/12/death-of-the-mouse/ for more information

2011-12-07T09:13:00.000-08:00

Recent work for Cerevellum

2011-11-03T14:28:00.000-07:00

Interior Proposals for the SSC Tuatara.
http://grabcad.com/library/tuatara-interior-proposal

2011-08-16T20:27:00.000-07:00

2011-08-16T20:18:00.000-07:00

2011-08-16T20:14:00.000-07:00

Super Soaker Sketches 45min each page.

2011-08-16T20:12:00.000-07:00

2011-06-28T17:56:00.000-07:00

2011-06-19T17:00:00.000-07:00

Featured on the luxology homepage- very nice indeed

2011-04-30T09:39:00.001-07:00

Awesome ad- so over the top ridiculous.

2011-03-28T17:36:00.000-07:00

Sweet- The Quattro grill I designed was featured on uncrate

2011-03-25T15:34:00.001-07:00

2011-03-20T13:38:00.000-07:00

Just got featured on the Luxology Image Gallery- Sweet!

2011-03-16T16:55:00.000-07:00

2011-02-02T19:16:00.000-08:00

http://ernestincardesign.blogspot.com/
Looks like he is part of the Quattro design team. Sweet work.

2011-02-02T18:41:00.000-08:00

Sketch vs CAD-If you are ever curious about what Industrial Designers are viewing online, the view stats on the videos on my youtube account show no doubt- Sketching wins hands down- a 2:1 walloping in some cases. This has always been a interesting factoid to me- given the amount of time I slog in CAD. Also when putting together training sessions with schools, a sketch presentation seems to generate far more visceral excitement. Is this simply a function of in-house design vs consulting?

Typically the farther into a project the exponentionally greater is the stamina required- you get pounded on the details from tooling, mech engg, marketing and the normal bunch of crazies. Unless the designer is embedded you dont get to participate in these scrums.
I would be the first to tell you that sketching is one of the super-weapons at my disposal, especially at meetings when the rest of the team has a hard time jotting down visual suggestions- but I have been trying to figure out the most ninja ways to use my tools- most bang for least effort, and it seems to be at odds with what the profession at large thinks.

I notice that with certain Engineering teams that are evaluated on throughput, they have less tolerance for potentially awesome but risky ideas, simply because it takes more time. I wonder if sketching is so highly valued in the profession because many consultancies are involved in the initial phases of a project and the great ideas are handed over to the internal teams to further develop. Internal teams rarely if ever advertise. They are tied up by so many NDAs you only know of their existence from job postings or design awards. Consultancies on the other hand are compelled to talk of their projects at every opportunity. They control the evaluation metrics so to speak, and I wonder if tools such as breadboard prototyping, CAD and model making are not proportionally valued as a result.

PS: This is my subjective view into the ID industry. Please comment if this resonates with you, or if you have had an opposite experience

2011-01-15T08:55:00.000-08:00

http://www.stokgrills.com/

2011-01-13T18:12:00.000-08:00

Ipad 2: Visual Consolidation of all the talk and rumor

2011-01-13T17:22:00.000-08:00

Ipad 2nd Gen CAD Visualization: Screen Grabs

2010-12-27T11:14:00.000-08:00

Artrage 3 is a really good sketch tool. Was trying out the demo today
www.artrage.com

2010-12-19T14:56:00.000-08:00

Fun project illustrating a story for a friend.

Background model in Solidworks, and quads exported from moi3d.
Blender 3d, for character modeling, fluid sim and rigging. Maxwell Render for image above.
Needs further work in Photoshop to fix artifacts here and there.

Thanks to Andrew Price from Blenderguru.com for invaluable tuts as well providing .blend files that I could dissect and use for the image above.

2010-12-04T21:04:00.000-08:00

2010-11-11T19:15:00.000-08:00

Always nice to get a best overall design
-excerpt from Pop Mech review.
Congrats to Hans and Benson-the design referred to as "straight out of an industrial design textbook"
Sweet!

2010-10-07T19:13:00.000-07:00

Popular Mechanics had a great review of the Job Max system here
I did work on cleaning up overmold colorways, vent patterns and boot designs.
Also did a lot of work on how the heads engage with the tool base.

2010-10-07T18:57:00.000-07:00

The Tek4 line in general was cool to work on. This camera though was a bear. We had to come up with a construction method that was tough and waterproof,a UI that was intuitive, while ensuring that the product made sense for the worksite. This meant stripping out complication from existing UIs while creating functionlity like a time-lapse feature that allows the user to set the camera going and then document a build. It also has the capability of attaching a memo audio recording to an image.

The large battery compartment provides a good grip area. The product has a distinct old-school feel to it. Its built like a power-tool after all.

2010-10-07T18:42:00.000-07:00

Oddly enough- this small flashlight has been one of my favorite projects. We were able to convince the team to go with quality metal components and castings. Also it is really packed pretty tight. When you pick it up it feels heavier than it looks-and all of it is functional.
The engineer on this project gave us a nice little surprise. Usually there is a thin reflector that is faced with a sheet of glass or plastic at the front. The glass and the reflector were consolidated into one acrylic component, making for a super tough bezel. The best part is the light itself which provides a clean beam for quite a long distance. All parts are sealed with o-rings-brings a smile to my face..

2010-09-30T17:19:00.000-07:00

Little Entertainment design on the side for Dr Grordbort's Raygun Shootout-a design competition from Weta.

PS: If you like it please do me a favor and vote for it at http://www.raygunshootout.com/submission/340

Fighting Phoenix from Thomas Parel on Vimeo.

2010-03-17T23:10:00.000-07:00

It would be awesome if someone did a Centurions movie

2010-02-17T03:55:00.000-08:00

This could be pretty cool. Looks like matchmoved footage assuming that the camera is a viewer with a video feed. Combined head tracking and augmented reality could be very cool for 3D CAID.

2010-02-01T19:37:00.000-08:00

Little known fact: Domesticated cats are better hunters than feral cats
They have a food source at home ,so you would expect that they would be fat and lazy. Turns out they hunt for the fun of it, while their hungry feral friends dont catch as many mice because they are... desperate and hungry. I find that this applies to companies too. The ones that are making a killing in the market still love the products that they create. Telltale signs for me are when the product development process revolves around cost factors and market analysis. These feral companies no longer enjoy the hunt.

Google for instance couldnt care less about operating systems, yet is in the process of developing Chrome as a competitor to Windows. They make their money in search and advertising , but in the process of improving search, are undercutting GPS, voice recognition, word processing, medical record keeping and multiple other industries in the process. These guys dont connect the dots, they throw a crap load of dots out into the world and find a line or ten that connect. Shoot then aim. Aim then shoot. Both happening concurrently.
They wouldnt be doing this if they were desperate

So if you are in a position of desperation- maybe your cat might be able to give you a tip or two ;)

2010-01-30T08:17:00.000-08:00

Octane Render - EcoRobot Rendering Tutorial from evermotion on Vimeo.

This is a pretty interesting new software called Octane Render that looks very promising indeed. It provides Maxwell Render quality at Hypershot speeds. Octane works using your video card, and is optimized for the Cuda feature set of Nvidia cards. This is the second program I have used that specifically leverages Cuda, and this apparently produces speed increases of 1000 to 1500% over traditional renders. Wow. So if you are putting together a design PC, you might do well to bet on Nvidia video cards.

Both NextLimit and Bunkspeed are purportedly working on GPU based render programs, while the folks behind fryrender already seem to have a product in pre-release.

I am kicking myself a little because I purchased the minimum level of graphics card that would run Solidworks 2009, because traditionally you get your performance from a killer CPU chip and buckets of RAM.

Currently Octane Render only works with obj files, so that is well and good for most CG software like 3DS Max, Maya etc, but you have to go through extra translation for CAD programs like Solidworks.

Get the demo here

http://www.refractivesoftware.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=112

Their January render competition

http://www.refractivesoftware.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=162&start=30

2010-01-30T07:43:00.000-08:00

Test of jewelry design technique with 3dcoat

2009-12-20T18:33:00.001-08:00

http://jnd.org/dn.mss/technology_first_needs_last.html

Don Norman reaches the conclusion that design research does not really result in breakthrough products. Pretty good read and this jives with my own experience with product development. Product research seems to be working for incremental developments- Integrative/Design thinking though seems to be far more potent in coming up with something new.

I have been on a few research trips and they ground your ideas really fast. You quickly realize what ideas may or may not be crap. They give you fuel for more ideas. But I get a lot of fuel from simply keeping my eyes and mind open (well..trying to anyway) My own experience is that you need to stew for a little while. That means new ingredients need to be added to the mix all the time. You need to be trying multiple approaches to product development- and that unfortunately a bunch of cool ideas will pop up on completely unrelated projects and tick off designers and managers when you suggest something that might delay a project with those good ideas :)

2009-12-18T03:09:00.001-08:00

2009-10-21T18:23:00.000-07:00

2009-10-16T22:17:00.000-07:00

Little warmup in Photoshop

2009-10-16T22:16:00.000-07:00

Pretty satisfied with this render.

2009-10-15T05:20:00.000-07:00

I refined the battery materials a little more as well as the lighting.

2009-10-14T22:27:00.000-07:00

Finally figured out UV mapping, and layered material creation in Modo. Really confusing paradigm compared to programs like Maxwell. There is a wierd hierarchy that is somewhat like Photoshop, but a lot more confusing for texture creation. Rendering a turntable tonight. Will proceed to do an exploded animation after that- at least the top coming off to show the circuit board.

2009-10-03T21:33:00.000-07:00

Headed to App State Nov 7th. Should be fun

2009-10-03T20:21:00.000-07:00

Modo Test Render, and as you can see youtube is not really the place for a smooth repeating loop. I will need to add a few more cycles to this loop and then upload. Edit- Oddly watching in HD seems a little smoother.

2009-10-03T18:53:00.000-07:00

A while back Citroen ran a competition where they uploaded CAD files of production vehicles and concepts for people to reconfigure and re-arrange. I started assembling some of these components together back into something pretty informative that gives you a nice feel for Class A surfaces and how they are put together. It would be interesting to hear some of the reasoning for these patch layouts, but you can learn a lot simply by untrimming some of these surfaces. Files here

2009-10-03T18:49:00.000-07:00

I've finally had some breathing space and uploaded an obj file of the Splash bowl here

2009-10-02T09:29:00.001-07:00

This is my review of a gesture program called Strokeit. My configurations can be found here

2009-10-01T21:40:00.000-07:00

Mecha pron mmmmm
District 9 was a ninja movie.

2009-06-17T21:40:00.000-07:00

Tek4 tools have been hitting Home Depot stores. It was a very eye-opening set of challenges. I am interested in seeing how consumers will react to the products. We went for a more machined, high metal design. It is good to have a development team that trusts the ID team.

PS- Highly recommend the flashlight which is solid and bright as heck.

2009-06-17T21:27:00.000-07:00

Updated Maxwell render that shows the bowl a little clearer. The idea here was to freeze a splash in time. I actually ran some cloth simulations to get some iterations, but decided to manually sculpt the surfaces. It might be cool to run a few sims and then sell the SLAs/resin casts. If anyone would like to donate a Z-corp print I would love to print this sucker out :)

2009-06-17T21:21:00.000-07:00

Rough sketches for the Kamaz Dakar 2022 Competition
Sketchovers welcome :)

2009-06-04T11:29:00.000-07:00

Wow- brilliant example of connecting the dots. Kudos to Microsoft. I never thought that I would say that. My impression of Microsoft has been fast follower with not much creativity, but Project Natal has given me a whole new impression of the MS team.This is a brilliant execution and idea.

I was just talking to a co-worker that if I were to do a Master's degree it would be in HCI- Human computer interaction, and learn some programming. Indutrial design really trains students well in design thinking, so that we can design the physical world, and come up with ideas.

For example back in 2003 I had an idea for a touch screen 3G telephone (which unfortunately I only have a thumbnail of from the waybackmachine). I am sure that a 100 other students had the idea too, but none of us had the wherewithal to implement the idea. So it is not enough that you have an idea, you need to have the tools or staff to implement that idea. Many schools teach that you need a well rounded education, but I always feel that that is never deep enough. There are too many idiosynchrosies in the tools that we use.

Guys like this really impress me- able to combine physical and software design to create elegant solutions.

So many things to learn....

2009-06-02T03:09:00.000-07:00

2009-05-27T09:40:00.000-07:00

Learning Dynamics in Houdini. Hopefully I can do some product animation in the future

2009-05-09T21:48:00.000-07:00

I dont understand how military programs like this are documented in such detail. I am glad that it is they are-as the design methodologies are super cool to observe. The only thing I can think of is that the current Black programs must be super advanced if they can talk openly about the JSF design proces.

2009-04-16T21:16:00.000-07:00

Photoshop composites

2009-04-16T19:32:00.000-07:00

Character Design for a Silo Collaborative Challenge
http://www.silo3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=16119
Base Mesh: Silo
Texture: 3D Coat
Render: Maxwell

I really should be visiting CAD monkey again. It has been too long.

2009-04-16T19:23:00.000-07:00

2009-04-13T22:49:00.000-07:00

Thunderbird 2 WIP: model in Silo, texture in 3DCoat

2009-04-13T15:43:00.000-07:00

So I was feeling particularly Dogbert like today. Here is my plan. Now that the economy is crap, I will make a tee that frenzies the crowd
Then when things turn around...BAM

When King Barack takes over I will appeal to the psychophants

and the real crazies of our age

2009-03-17T05:28:00.000-07:00

That auto-drive is what I am always wishing for at night on 11 hr drives.

2009-03-06T10:37:00.001-08:00

World Builder from Bruce Branit on Vimeo.

2009-02-28T11:22:00.001-08:00

Ah Cookie Monster..
Interesting side story- whenever I travel abroad, I often get pulled aside for random searches. I have found though that wearing a Sesame Street T-shirt helps- "Hmm- he looks like a terrorist, but darn it- thats Cookie Monster- he's alright" Thanks Cookie.

2009-02-24T18:15:00.000-08:00

Album Art Challenge made the rounds at the office today.

1) Click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random

The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

- - - - - - - - -

2) Click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3

The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

- - - - - - - - -

3) Go to Flickr and click on “explore the last seven days” or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days

Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4) Use Photoshop or similar to put it all together.

2009-02-24T06:34:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday Ben Thomas and I had a great time at Auburn University. It was a long session, as we tried to pack in as much information as we could on sketching and rendering. Hopefully students found the session helpful. A good chunk of the time was spent on a student project. We brainstormed on possible functionality, sketched in a lot of rough concepts and rendered one of the rough sketches to a finished form. Ben demonstrated his Painter techniques in rendering a nailer. He has a great way of explaining as he works. I tend to clam up and keep quiet. Between the two of us hopefully there was enough communication.
We were also encouraged to see the improvement in student work from last year. Here is a pdf of some of the rough development sketches that we worked on.

Thanks again to Shea Tillman and Louisa Stowers from the IDSA, who organized everything at Auburn, and a shoutout to Alerick from the core77 boards :).

2009-02-16T11:25:00.000-08:00

http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20090211/ap_on_hi_te/tec_techbit_piano_touch
Sweet! Kevin Huang a friend of mine from OSU was in the news lately. We were hallmates our freshman year. He developed a glove that aids in learning piano.

2009-02-12T06:09:00.000-08:00

Very informative booklet on metal stamping here

2009-02-12T05:48:00.000-08:00

Now thats a Corvette that I'd like to see put in production
via carbodydesign.com

2009-02-10T15:27:00.000-08:00

Maxwell Render Test: definitely nicer render overall. Took an afternoon to render.

2009-02-10T15:26:00.000-08:00

Photoview Raw Render: 12min Used the channels to select the background

Crop and Rotate for effect

Raw Render:20 min

Touched up

We were doing a Maxwell and Photoview 360 comparison with the CAD file of an RC car for Sears. The RC car was designed by Doug Ritterling, the current head of design at Emerson.

2009-02-03T15:36:00.000-08:00

This is the second time Ben and I doing this session at Auburn University. It was a lot of fun the first time. We are looking forward to this session.

2009-01-31T10:34:00.001-08:00

Maker Profile - Kinetic Wave Sculptures on MAKE: television from make magazine on Vimeo.

2009-01-28T12:20:00.000-08:00

ILoveSketch No-Cut Demo: Spacecraft from Seok-Hyung Bae on Vimeo.

:( Everytime I see Ilovesketch, extreme feelings of jealousy for the lucky designer running that demo spring up inside me

2009-01-23T06:53:00.000-08:00

http://www.simonhoegsberg.com/we_are_all_gonna_die/slider.html
Cool presentation and photos.

2009-01-21T05:58:00.000-08:00

Local blogger from Greenville SC. weirdotoys.com -my kind of site

2009-01-20T22:18:00.000-08:00

Little update- getting more comfortable with the tool-set.

2009-01-14T06:03:00.000-08:00

Screenshots from 3d-coatSoftware found at http://www.3d-coat.com Look for the alpha software download in the forums for the volumetric sculpting version

2009-01-14T05:59:00.000-08:00

I have been using a program called 3d-coat the last few days. 3d-coat started off as a texturing tool but has now added volumetric sculpting. This is really cool because it means that you can carve your sculpt with no regard to a base mesh as in other apps like Zbrush and Silo. Carving holes are much easier. It is literally like 3D photoshop. (The image above though is a paintover in PS)

The goggle images below are screenshots from the program. This is definitely not a CAD tool, though I suppose that you could retopologize the high polygon meshes to send it through t-splines. However the ease of changing the crease direction and the ease with which you can sculpt can definitely spark new thought. The interface leaves a lot to be desired. It is definitely the product of a computer programmer. On the other hand Andrew, the lone programmer of this program is an extremely responsive developer. The program might not be pretty but it incorporates a lot of functionality..fast.

2009-01-13T15:15:00.000-08:00

2009-01-06T20:35:00.000-08:00

2008-12-15T16:05:00.000-08:00

ID is the least defensible field in product development
(and that is why design is powerful)

Hear me out on this. I've given some thought over the years about the core responsibilities of industrial designer. What could you take away form our workflow- and still be considered an industrial designer? Concept engineering is something that we do all the time, as is market and brand analysis. Life cycle analysis could be something we might have to do more of. But take them all away and you would still be considered an industrial designer. To me it seems like styling and ergonomics are the two things that you cant take away and be an industrial designer- ie: design a product to make sense to the user, and make a product that is beautiful.

What are the technical skills that we possess that no-one else could take responsibility for?
Ergonomics is a field unto itself, and the level of ergonomics that we practise is something that most people can pick up quickly. Most people I know from various departments can come up with good ergonomics given some effort.

Beauty on the other hand is something that needs years of experience to generate. The generation of usable beauty for all seems to be the core of industrial design. Beauty is hard to generate, and hard to defend- but I think that even above ergonomics beauty is what drives industrial designers.

What about design thought?
Personally I am not a big proponent of the term design thought. It is my belief that everyone is creative, and we box in other peoples thoughts by saying that designers are the only ones that can brainstorm, prototype and make connections. Sci-fi writers make new connections all the time, as do businessmen and software engineers. To say that we are the only ones to think of a product or service from the customers point of view is simply not true. We happen to be the ones earlier in the product development cycle and have to generate those ideas. You could even take away functional innovation and brainstorming and still be a designer.

So what?
I posit that beauty is what drives designers. Beauty is also the most subjective aspect of what we do and the hardest to analyse. Is the Ipod 25% or 200% more attractive than the Zune? ID runs into the fact that beauty is very low on the totem pole of importance in product development (I think that it should be that way). Functionality >ergonomics> beauty.

It is like the curse of oil. Oil rich countries tend to be unstable, and non-innovative. Oil-poor countries like Japan, and China tend not to be one-trick ponies, and have mulltiple economic and innovation strategies.

Industrial design is like a resource poor country. We have very little to call our own. We have difficulty defining our own profession. We cant afford to rely on one set of expertise or technical knowledge. It also means that we jump through more hoops outside of our core expertise to shepherd what matters to us through to the final product.

This constant weariness and position of defence makes us hungry and that is what makes us potent product developers.

Just some jetlagged thoughts from my hotel early in the morning :)

2008-12-15T15:26:00.000-08:00

Reason why its awesome #1: JJ Abrams.
He of Cloverfield, Lost and wellspring of awesome plotlines
Reason #2: Villains resonating their way through steel walls.

Reason#3: Said resonating villains and henchmen have good taste in power tools. They are using the the Ridgid R1020 angle grinder for their nefarious purposes. Yes thats right- discerning villains use tools I design in their plans to conquer the world.

2008-12-13T04:00:00.000-08:00

I will be going to Ningbo China tomorrow. That should be interesting. Will be there for about a week.

View Larger Map

2008-12-11T07:38:00.000-08:00

The techniques of Mikael Lugnegård from Mikael Lugnegård on Vimeo.

Mikael Lugnegård posted a great sketching demo on vimeo. It is good to see how he achieves his great line quality.

2008-12-10T15:26:00.000-08:00

2008-12-05T08:52:00.000-08:00

Beardos of the office No-shave-mber contest.

2008-11-25T15:30:00.000-08:00

Test Renders from Photoview 360. Will be making a video of this 360 techniques shortly.

2008-11-25T14:40:00.000-08:00

R69030CFA Final Product
You can find specs and purchase here

2008-11-25T14:36:00.000-08:00

69030 CFA Combo Kit Compressor

A lot of thought went into how the the hose reel was integrated into the toolbox, as well as how to push blow molding. This was such a fast paced program- drove everyone to the limit.

The bent-tube frame went through minimal changes through development, but the blow-mold vendor was new so we had to do quite a few iterations of the toolbox. Render from Photoworks.

Maxwell Render to give an idea of scale. You can really tell the difference between a Maxwell render and one from Photoworks. The guy in the picture is my good friend Ben Thomas. Maxwell is awesome, but you really need a strong PC.

2008-11-25T14:01:00.000-08:00

I did the modelling on the handle section of this Ridgid compound miter saw. It was a bear tuning the design to get rid of pinching points on your finger. Model in Solidworks, and render in Photoworks.

2008-11-21T07:55:00.000-08:00

http://www.darkaudio.co.uk/
Great music to design to.

2008-11-21T07:21:00.000-08:00

http://www.jujups.com/jujups3/

Interesting use of rapid prototyping technologies for personalized gifts.
I am really surprised at the low price. They are using a 3D printer to output Christmas ornaments.

2008-11-19T09:25:00.000-08:00

Fred Maroon has a great sketch dump here http://picasaweb.google.com/freximus/Sketchdump#
and a cool blog as well http://maroon-pd.blogspot.com/

2008-11-12T09:07:00.000-08:00

Images from Design40 at The Ohio State University design school.
Examples of student work.

2008-11-12T09:03:00.000-08:00

Ohio State's design program just had its 40th Anniversary, and it was great to catch up with classmates and alumni.

2008-11-12T09:00:00.000-08:00

http://www.develop3d.com/downloads/
Really wicked magazine for product developers.
Highly recommend-all you do is sign up.

2008-11-05T10:59:00.000-08:00

Not going to make friends with this post :) I am listening to public radio, and it really is a little nauseating how much the press is going on about this "adroit new leader" who is making history and taking us into a "brave new world". Ive been spending all morning gagging. All of NPR this morning was filled with stories of how the US has gotten past its racism...please- poor analysis and insulting to Obama. Just because someone voted for McCain doesnt show racism. I'll be honest- I am ambivalent about both candidates, but you can definitely tell who the press was pulling for.

2008-11-04T13:43:00.001-08:00

http://www.amazon.com/gp/mpd/permalink/m1THTXLYALTON1

2008-10-23T06:35:00.000-07:00

Update from Eric:
"With the camera closer and a smaller calibration printout the detail is showing up much better now. Still not completely satisfied though. I may go pick up a better webcam soon, and try to get a better laser."

2008-10-23T06:30:00.000-07:00

When my friend Eric Lagman does something he does it 150%.
I sent an email around with my rough scan and he went ahead and purchased the David Scan Software and relayed his setup.
This is his experience:

"The web cam and laser I already had. The calibration panels are white melamine, but gator board would work also. Those panels can be scaled to as large as a plotter will print. One guy scanned a boat hull by painting the pattern at the corners of a warehouse wall. There is a free version of the software, but you need to take it into another free software called meshlab to merge all the scans from rotating the object. The software that comes with the scanning software does such a good job of merging that I went ahead and just bought it.

The better the camera and laser the higher resolution scan you can get. Better camera=higher resolution at high frame rate. Better laser=Thin as possible and bright as possible. This guy has done some amazing scans of toy action figures that are extremely detailed.
http://www.david-laserscanner.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=681&highlight=figure

Here is his equipment.

Camera = 890.00 http://www.theimagingsource.com/en/topics/firewire-cameras-at-the-imaging-source/

Laser = $234.00 http://shop.david-laserscanner.com/

But there are guys like this getting nice scans with a $100.00 webcam and $100.00 laser http://www.david-laserscanner.com/wiki/user_page/magweb
I would be happy with the level of detail he got.

I will be scanning a Ren model of the Ridigid 12v that had clay patched onto the handle area to fine tune the comfort of the grip area. This can then be taken into Solidworks so that the existing parametric model can be adjusted to fit over the “tracing mesh” that the scanner output. I will let you know how it turns out with the current equipment I have at home."

2008-10-23T06:23:00.000-07:00

Recent interview in Design Perspectives. Pretty cool.

2008-10-20T05:22:00.000-07:00

Awesome example of a scan from David Scan

First scan with an old SLA model. I was surprised that it even scanned considering that the program was a free 2MB download. . Pretty freakin awesome.Used a Leica red laser level, and a Microsoft webcam. Background was mounted on foam core, and I will definitely have to mess with the capture and camera settings.

(Repost because the image was not showing up for some reason)