The NextEngine 3D Scanner is now available to Dalhousie students and faculty at the Killam Library. You can book the scanner any time between 10AM and 5PM, Monday to Friday, by accessing the Dalhousie Libraries Study Room Booking System and selecting Killam 3D-Scanner from the dropdown menu. The NextEngine 3D scanner is available free of charge.

Scanning an item will typically take between 1 and 2 hours, so it’s recommended that you book the scanner for at least two hours if you want try it out. Remember, since it’s a laser scanner, it will have problems capturing overly reflective or dark, dense surfaces such as glass or felt. It is extremely good, however, at capturing materials such as rock, wood and plastic. Using the NextEngine 3D Scanner you can create 3D models of your favourite baseball hats, dolls, action figures, frog skeletons, theater props, or any cool seashells you find at the beach.

A screenshot of a scanned horseshoe crab.

Once you’ve created your 3D model it can be exported as an OBJ file, which can then be brought into a software program such as 3D Studio Max to be animated, recoloured or redrawn; or else you can simply share it with others online . By exporting your model as an STL file, and cleaning up it using the freeware programs MeshLab and Netfabb, you can also send it into the Dalhousie Libraries 3D Printing service to be 3D printed.

You can read more about the NextEngine 3D scanner here: http://www.nextengine.com/faq.