How complicated is it to use a faro arm and software?
Is it much more expensive or comparative in price to buy a 3d laser scanner that can convert the data to CAM software?
Those arms are a waste of money imo, you have to move the arm and touch the object for every point you want represented on the computer. How are you going to do a car bumper? One Big EXPENSIVE arm that will take you days if not weeks to get a good model. With a 3d scanner one scan can capture up to 1million points of reference and u will have a model in that day if not hour with Solidworks. Get your self the NextEngine 3D scanner and you can do anything from an apple to a boat. At $3000 it’s a steal for anyone that wants to move up to another level when making plugs/molds. https://www.nextengine.com/
$3000!! WOW THAT"S A BOATLOAD OF …pennies 
I’m on the next train to buy one 
That is dirt cheap. Have you used one yourself?
I know my intern is going to buy one now for himself… lol he’s into this stuff. I’ll be getting one asap…
That totally sucks about the CMM faro arm, i was under the impression Faro recently came out with a laser scanner arm? If so i know it own’t be no $3000… probably more like $45,000.
Now onto another important question, is solidworks just a CAD design type program, and can SolidWorks produce CNC machine code or do i have to buy a seperate CAM program?
all reverse engineering systems take awhile to learn how to do. After all, you are adding points, but they have to be modeled into a full part. Faro does have laser scanning systems. Key is to make sure NOTHING MOVES. Still, good for checking parts you make for precision.
Solidworks is a CAD and I think CAM. As far as I know, it models, and can export. CATIA is the same, but TONS more addons, like fiber layup, FEA, everything you can think of. Solidworks might as well.
I guess I forgot that Faro had the laser attachment. But it’s still BIG MONEY, way more then a hole setup from Nextengine. The Next engine only took me a weekend to figure out how to use, so if your worried about the learning curve it’s not that hard. I do have cad experience so I think that helped alot. If your not familiar with Solidworks or Rhino (I hate Rhino once I bought SW, but that’s just me) you should DL the trail/demo version to start and get your feet wet. Now I say those 2 cad programs because those are the two that NextEngine supports for converting the mesh that the laser captures into a working cad file. See Products page http://www.nextengine.com/products . And by the sounds of it you don’t have a cad program. Rhino starts around $1000 I believe and then SW starts around $4000 and goes up to $14,000 with a yearly maintenance fee of approx. $2000. And sadly these don’t come with CAM, that you also need to buy. There are TONS of CAM programs out that that will work with these programs, this just depends on your budget and machine. You can get a Bob-Cad-CAM which wont work in either program for a few hundred bucks and I think its junk, you will have to save and export your cad file into that program. Or get SurfCam for around $7,000+ or MasterCam for double that. The more expensive CAM programs can run inside of your CAD program as if they were part of the CAD, so if you create a tool path and you don’t like what you see, you can just quickly change your model and click update on the tool path. Makes things simple as pie.
Why are there different price points for SW?
There’s different version of SW, Standard, Professional, and Premium. If I remember correctly Professional has Cosmos, and Premium has a ton of extras like design collaboration and Solidworks routing tools.
A full breakdown of features is on this page.
http://www.solidworks.com/sw/products/mechanical-design-software-matrix.htm
@Rototrage
I feel the complete opposite way. Once I learned Rhino and T Splines I hated using SW for surfaces. SW is great for solid easily definable geometry but I find Rhino’s free form editing easier to use for curvy parts. A tip for people looking to try either is to get the student version. You’re not allowed to sell parts or make a profit off the drawing but the program is functional and you can gain a lot of insight into how it works. Of course both offer a free trial period but I find that it doesn’t allow enough time to get familiar with the program.
You’re also right about the expensive cad programs. Although I don’t use any I’ve seen both being used and the ones that integrate themselves into the CAD software are a breeze to use. Direct editing in the CAD software speeds up workflow immensely.
@Riff42
Solidworks is CAD only and is very limited in CAE capabilities. Catia basically has everything ever and pretty much all the large companies use it. It’s extremely powerful and with that difficult to learn. Both are owned by the same company Dassualt which I don’t particularly like. Every year they introduce a new version of Solidworks and the new versions cannot save files for the older versions which means everyone has to upgrade every year if just one person has the newer version.
hmm if you ask me that is dirty of SolidWorks. they should allow at least the owners have a couple years to sharee and save files between versions.
It’s really a matter of intent. A faro arm with stylus (little pointer thing) is used primarily for QC; i.e. establishing dimensional information, planar constraints, etc. It can be pressed into reverse engineering surfaces, but its not the best tool. With the laser scanner it becomes another matter and can be used for reverse engineering quite well. But last I checked the price is a bit high ($90k+ with laser, half to 2/3rds with stylus). What it has that a next engine doesn’t is accuracy, usually an order of magnitude better than say a next engine. Of course accuracy is all about what you need. If you’re making a bumper than ±.005" to .010" is more than sufficient. If you’re making wing skins for an F22, your tolerances are obviously higher and you start compensating you metrology issues. A mid way step would be creaforms line of handyscans ($30K+). More labor intensive than a faro or metris system, but still laser scanning and reasonable tolerances for general reverse engineering.
In terms of CAD systems, I can say that I am not a big Rhino fan, and prefer Solidworks to it. Having said that, in general (without add on software such as rapidform) Rhino is far superior for dealing with the point clouds that come from the scanners. My main problem with Rhino is that I haven’t found many people who make watertight solids with it, and I often have to spend time correcting the models. But in terms of laying down surfaces quickly and idea development, Rhino definitely has its place. Neither system includes CAM, but each has add-ons from various companies for it. Solidworks also has the option of adding Simulation (previously Cosmosworks) and Floworks (CFD) whereas I don’t believe Rhino has a physics engine add-on at this point. Just my .02 from someone who’s spent to much time dealing with the above.
Cheers!
Fastrr - Since you were asking about CAM programs what kind of cnc machine are you looking at getting?
Also did you guys hit the lottery down there? 
Cause with your thread about compression molding equipment and this one, you gotta be looking at spending at least $100,000 if not double.