- The automotive industry is one of the most sophisticated users of laser scanning technology.
- Paul Tan provides an in-depth look into the design of a new BMW, and how laser scanning fits in.
- The Powerbench is BMW’s high end virtual reality and visualization system used to do the design reviews.
Based on my research the automotive industry is the most sophisticated user of 3D laser scanning technology. They chose to work with surface meshes rather than point clouds many years ago, but modeling automobiles is a much more constrained problem than attempting to build a surface model of the earth.
Paul Tan provides one of the most detailed and fascinating descriptions of the car design process in his recent blog. In this case it is the new F10 BMW 5 Series. He got to visit the BMW mothership in Munich to learn the history of the design of this new model – very lucky guy.
The post is a long one but be sure to read far enough to learn about the use of laser scanning and the incredible design visualization system that they use to review the progress. BMW calls this virtual reality system the Powerbench. This high end visualization system is powered by 23 high performance computers with high end graphics cards, and that is for the 2D graphics. It is capable of 3D as well.
