Re: Digest Number 6

> _________________
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 08:40:18 -0400
> From: rmcilvaine@...
> Subject: Re: Digest Number 2

Mac said:

>
> #1
>
> - Select said items.
> - pick or type the "change" command and select "layer" as the thing to
> change. enter the new desired layer.
>

Yup, after reading the other posts, this should have been "chprops" not
"change". Amazing how fast you forget.

> _________________
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 06:58:16 -0700
> From: "Dan Mauch" <dmauch@...>
> Subject: Re: Digest Number 3
>
> I have just made two ISA PCB cards that use the US digitals
> 7266-R1 From:
> Tom Kulaga <tkulaga@...> web site. I will let you know
> how it works in
> a day or so.

Dan,

Please let us know. Can you also keep track of how much time it took to
build and what the final parts total $'s are? It would be good to get a
comparison to the price of the US Digital board. It uses 4 of the 7266
chips.

>
> Message: 19
> Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 22:57:21 -0400
> From: "Chris Ellacott" <footman@...>
> Subject: laser scanning
>
> maybe i'm being [very] naive here, but, is the idea of a low
> cost laser scanner a pipe dream?? what i envision
> would/could? contain a few basic parts:

Depends on the definition of low cost scanner is. You can buy hi-res
flatbeds for way under $100US.

> 1) laser source (? spinning laser pointer type device to
> create a 'line' of light - aperture to focus light on
> required surface)
> 2) video camera (? filtered to just 'see' the laser light and
> set at an angle so as to see the surface contour 'curve')
> 3) screen grabber board on PC (would 'grab' the image of the
> contour of the object (foot in my case) at preset intervals of time)
> 4) CAD software (to assemble these curves into a solid model
> and then alter the image as required)

This is the tricky software part. The curves from a scanned image are
typically a series of unconnected dots that appear (to the human
eye/brain as a line when displayed) as a line. So the software has to
infer which line each dot belongs to. To the computer, the dots are just
a big bucket of dots, each of which has an x,y,z coordinate.

Companies like Kurtzweil have been working on this since the 60's.

I'm not saying it can't be done, just that it won't be cheap technology
for a few years.