Einstar Workflow Guide

Preparing Your Object

Before setting up the scanner, you need to ensure that whatever you are scanning is ready. There are several things to consider when making a plan for capturing your scan. 

Object Size

The Einstar is not a great scanner for smaller objects less than ~4"x4"x4". Do not expect to capture fine detail on smaller objects, these are better processed with something like the Einscan-SE. 

Larger objects will require being scanned in multiple scans and then combined into a single file later in the process. The limitation here is fully down to resources on the computer used. If you are using a computer with the minimum 32gb of ram, expect that you will be more limited in what you can capture in a single scan. Make a plan that divides your object into sections with enough detail at the edges to provide sufficient features for alignment later. 

Object Surface Finish

Black or reflective objects are hard to scan and will require some kind of surface treatment. There are DIY formulas for scanning spray using isopropyl alcohol and talcum powder, or you can use a commercial product like those from AESUB. For objects that are sensitive to residue, or that would be hard to clean later, consider using one of their evaporating sprays. 

Object Features

If the item you are scanning has a lot of large featureless areas you will need to use markers. The scanner can lose tracking very easily in feature only tracking mode, so consider if the object is detailed enough to keep tracking locked. Decide if you are applying markers directly to the part as stickers, or using reusable markers. 

Scanning Location

Make sure you are working somewhere that you can easily move around the object and capture it from every angle. You will find that the scanner works best at different orientations to allow its cameras to see from specific angles. Do a dry run to make sure you can capture the object without the data cable getting caught or disloging/moving markers. 

Scan Settings/Setting Up a Project

When you create a new project group you are presented with the following list of options

• Scan Mode: Person or Object. Person mode optimizes a few things for scanning people, use object mode for everything else.

• Object Size: In general always use medium and large setting. Small object mode is harder to work with, and the Einstar isn't the best small object scanner

• Mode of Alignment: Hybrid is usually the best

  • Hybrid: Use a combination of features, markers, and texture. You can select any combination of these to use

    • Features: the scanner tracks based on the scanned geometry. Performance is ok, but tracking is easy to lose and drift is more common

    • Markers: The scanner looks for marker dots placed on or around the object

    • Texture: the scanner uses the captured texture for tracking, helpful for person tracking particularly 

  • Global Markers: Useful if you have a scanning workspace that has permanently applied tracking markers that never move. You take one scan first to capture all the markers and can then import that marker data to use for future scans. 

• Resolution: How much data the scanner gathers in the point cloud. Smaller values collect more detail but use more memory. Larger values allow for larger scans with less captured detail. 

• Texture Scanning: toggle if you want to capture the texture of the object. 

Capturing Your Scan

Scan Preview and Adjustments

The main scanning window has a few different sections as shown. 

1. This is the raw preview of what the scanner can see. Use this to adjust your brightness setting both in preview and scanning mode. If an object cannot be seen at all, increase brightness. If the object is saturated red, reduce it. 

2. These are your main settings for scanning. 

   1. Brightness can be adjusted with the slider or with the buttons on the scanner itself

   2. Working distance can be adjusted if needed, however the scanner works best at the default values

   3. Plane detection is useful if you are scanning on a work surface and want the software to attempt to automatically remove that surface from the scan data. Do not use this for objects with large flat areas. 

   4. Data Quality Indicator colors the scan data based on how much has been captured. This is very useful for determining if you have captured the object sufficiently. Green indicates that an area is sufficiently captured. 

   5. If you have Plane Detection on, enabling auto cutting plane will automatically stop the software capturing scan data for anything below that plane. 

   6. Point distance can be adjusted during the scan. This decides the minimum spacing between captured point information in the final point cloud. Smaller distances result in more data and larger files to process, while larger distances will reduce fine details. 

3. The bottom contains view settings and tools for selecting and editing the raw scan data. These are used to select and delete sections of the scan that were captured in error, or not needed in the final file. 

4. These are your main controls. From top to bottom:

   1. Scan control, cycles through preview mode, scanning mode, and end scan. 

   2. Generate point cloud. You can choose to optimize the point cloud or just process raw, optimizing uses more RAM but results in a better point cloud. 

   3. Project Group, allows you to create a new group or open an existing one. This option will be greyed out if you have scan data that has not been converted to point cloud. 

   4. Delete Scan, used to delete all current scan data if you wish to start over. 

   5. Align Scans, used when multiple scans have been captured and need to be aligned before meshing. Only available once all scans (projects) have been processed into point clouds. 

   6. Export Scan, used to export the raw scan data. Useful if you find that a project group will not mesh due to resource constraints. You can export scans individually and then import them into a new project group with fewer projects and attempt to reprocess and mesh with less data. 

   7. Mesh Model, used after the point cloud(s) are ready and the total project group is to be converted into a mesh file. 

Scan Capturing

Once your settings are correct and brightness is set, capture your scan. 

Move slowly and watch the computer to see how well it is keeping up with the scan. Pay attention to tracking loss and take care to correct quickly. Failure to allow tracking to re-establish can result in bad data being captured. If you notice that tracking has shifted and you are getting misaligned data stop the scan and use the rewind feature, or select bad sections and delete them. 

You can pause and restart scanning as often as needed. Just allow the scanner to find alignment in preview mode before moving to scan mode. 

Aligning

Once you have your scans captured and converted to point clouds, you can use the align tool to arrange them all into a cohesive point cloud. There are 4 alignment methods:

1. Automatic Feature Alignment - the software will attempt to make its best guess at alignment. This often fails. 

2. Manual Feature Alignment - you select at least 3 points on each scan that are the same feature to provide an initial alignment, and then the software fine tunes from there. 

3. Marker alignment - When markers are used, the software will attempt to automatically align by markers present in both scans

4. Manual Marker Alignment - When automatic marker alignment fails, you can manually pick makers similar to the manual feature alignment. 

The workspace has 3 windows. The top left is the "fixed window", which is the scan you want to keep stationary. The top right is the "Floated Window", which is the scan you want to move to meet the fixed scan. And the bottom window shows the two scans in the same view to allow inspection of the alignment. 

Pick a scan for each of the fixed and floated windows, pick the align mode, and press apply to process. If the alignment works, select next to align further scans, or exit to finalize alignment. 

Post Processing

Once the initial mesh is created, it can be further processed and optimized. 

Review the official docs for a summary of each tool. 

Mesh Alignment

Before exporting the final mesh, it is helpful to align it to the coordinate system. This is done in the measure workspace. 

The official docs give a full overview of the tools and process, however the general workflow is:

Choose if you want to manually align the part, or if you want to generate and use planes/lines/points. 

If you want to use manual alignment, jump right to the align tool and use the options to rotate and move the mesh into alignment. 

If you want to use features, first create the features. The easiest method is to create at least 1 plane, line, and point, and then use those to perform a 3-2-1 alignment.