A comparative study on affordable photogrammetry tools

Abstract

The objective of the Project MANEUVER (Manufacturing Education Using Virtual Environment Resources)1 is to develop an affordable virtual reality (VR) framework to address the imminent demand for well-trained digital manufacturing (DM) professionals. One important part of Project MANEUVER involves studying, evaluating, and identifying cost-efficient ways to generate 3D solid models for use in VR frameworks. To this end, this paper explains the research effort to find alternative ways so that 3D solid model could easily be generated without using any costly 3D scanning technology. In this study, the project team identified two software tools that could help the manufacturing professionals and educators generate a solid model of several parts. These two software tools namely, Qlone and 3DF Zephyr Free were selected for this study based on factors such as ease-of-use, cost-effectiveness, and the cognitive load on users. Using casestudies these two software tools were used to generate 3D solid models and prototypes. Finally, their pros and cons collected throughout this study were reported.