Exporting a scanned image

[bobgrosh]

I ordered a scanner a couple weeks ago, and it was waiting for me when I got home last weekend. I was worried that I would not get one, or that it would take months to get one. I was really happy to see such prompt delivery.

Since I've only had my carver a couple weeks, I ended up using most my weekend carving projects I had drawn using my favorite picture editor. I learned a lot, and actually got a couple useful carvings, but the weekend was short, and I did not get to try my new probe.

Now, I'm planing my next adventure for this coming weekend.

I have a 1:24 scale building in my garden railroad that the weather has caused it to fall apart. Rather than just fix it, I think I'd like to scan the building walls and roof, IE 4 walls and 2 roof sections, disassembled. That will be 6 scans of objects that are 1/4" thick and 8" x 16" max.

Since the building is 1:24 scale but my garden trains are 1:20 scale, I want to scale all the parts up, so the 8" by 16" wall will become 9.6" by 19.2". That seems easy to do in Designer.

However, the original model was "selectively compressed". That is, some windows in the original structure were eliminated from the model and some walls were shortened to make the model smaller so it would fit on basement train layouts. Since my garden railroad is outdoors, I'd like to extensively edit the walls so the model is not only the correct scale, but also an accurate model of the original building. I'll have to add some windows, lengthen walls and change the roof and it's pitch. I would feel much better using my graphic editor to do that and re-importing the edited wall greyscales back into designer.

Two questions:

1. How do I export the scanned building components? IE save them to a file as .bmp. png or .gif. so I can edit them using my preferred graphic program.

2. Other than building a scanning sled ( got the parts from home depot yesterday) and watching the excellent video posted by Michael T three more times, does anyone have any suggestions, hints, or things to watch out for?

BoB

[mtylerfl]

Two questions:

1. How do I export the scanned building components? IE save them to a file as .bmp. png or .gif. so I can edit them using my preferred graphic program.

2. Other than building a scanning sled ( got the parts from home depot yesterday) and watching the excellent video posted by Michael T three more times, does anyone have any suggestions, hints, or things to watch out for?

BoB

Hello Bob,

1) Presently, as far as have been able to determine, there is no way to export a scan as any type of standard graphic file - the Pattern Editor only allows you to save the scan either as a ".mpw" file or a ".ptn" file. The Pattern Editor does have some editing ability for minor editing tasks, but is very basic in functionality in the current version.

A possible, but "not so good" workaround would be to do a "Print Screen" of the scan when it is displayed in the Pattern Editor window (i.e., press Alt+PrintScreen, then paste the screen-shot into your graphics application). After editing, you can save the graphic (as a jpg, png, bmp, whatever), and then import the edited image back into Designer to re-save it as a pattern. Again, this is probably not such a good workaround, but it's the only one that I know of.

2) Couple things to keep in mind as far as scanning...

a) Before you scan your first "large" object, be aware that the scanning probe needs a bit of extra clearance from the sides of the sled to avoid bumping them when you scan an object. Unlike a flat board when carving, the side rails actually reduce the total useable scan-width area because of the dimension of the scanning probe's holder diameter plus the wire that comes out the one side (more clearance is needed on the wire side - approx. 1.25" from the side rail to avoid "collision").

b) Any object you want to scan cannot exceed the height of your sled+side rails (max. 2.25" from the surface of your sled to the top of the rails)

c) You should know that scanning can be addictive. Soon, everything you look at will become "scannable" material. Beware!

That's about it. You will certainly have a lot of fun using your scanning probe.

PS - Thanks for the nice comment about my scanning video!