Digitizing Large Industrial Equipment to Streamline Custom Modifications
To customize large, complex industrial equipment for specific project needs, you need to capture a 3D model with sufficient accuracy to perform reverse engineering before designing the modification.
Paul Hanaphy
Cool Stuff
Jul 20, 2026
At the heart of every construction project around the world, there’s a handful of vehicles doing all the heavy lifting. Whether it be a trencher, bulldozer, backhoe, or crane, such machinery needs to be safe, efficient, and designed for a specific purpose—which can depend heavily on the project at hand.
Often a standard tool change can make industrial equipment adaptable, but in certain cases, where necessitated by obstacles, ground clearance, or environmental hazards, more extensive modifications are required. That’s where 4C Creative CAD CAM comes in. For the last seven years, the Artec Ambassador, 4C Creative, has provided services to an excavation firm in the Netherlands. 4C’s latest modification project was to digitize a 10-meter vehicle featuring a cabin with complex internals, an air filtration system, and a boom mounted to a rotating platform with Caterpillar tracks.
Traditionally, getting hold of CAD data for such a large, complex structure would require slow, methodical manual modeling. Introducing 3D scanning into the equation allowed 4C to capture the equipment in its current state for measurement later on. Better yet, pairing Artec Leo and Artec Ray II meant not having to compromise scale or accuracy, allowing for the best of both worlds.
With a built-in display, battery, and processor, Leo is usually more than capable of capturing large objects by itself. In this case, Ray II was brought in to supplement the device’s versatile scanning capabilities with long-range data capture. Mounted high above the rest of the vehicle, its robotic arm was especially difficult to reach with Leo—but was no problem for Ray II.
Another challenge was capturing the underside of the vehicle. Weighing several tons, the equipment sat just 80 cm above ground level, making it unsafe to scan from below. Removing Ray II’s tripod and positioning it on the floor proved the perfect solution. This allowed the vehicle’s underbelly to be quickly and easily captured from all angles without any unnecessary risks.
To meet customer requirements, 4C was also asked to capture the machine’s staircase. This is where Leo and Ray II really shined. The challenge was to capture the geometry of the stairs and the handrails where it would be easy to lose tracking. Using Leo, the company would’ve had to align a lot of separate scans together. Instead, the data was captured from the side using the Ray II. After that, they used Leo to focus on scanning the most important parts with higher resolutions and accuracy.
Merging Different Datasets
In 3D scanning, the power is often in the software. This is especially true of Artec Studio, which boasts a completely unique feature: Smart Fusion. Not only does Smart Fusion combine point clouds from long- and short-range 3D scans, it uses the highest resolution data available for peak results.
Those wanting to take full control over data processing can also align scans themselves. 4C aligned its scans based on geometric features and merged them using Artec Studio’s Sharp Fusion algorithm, which was more efficient than many other target-based workflows.
Scan decimation came in very handy with this project. Capturing the entire vehicle with structured-light 3D scanning would’ve resulted in a huge file with around 50 GB of information. Decimating the final model to remove unneeded polygons reduced this figure to just 300 MB, making it much easier to send to third-party software for modification.
Artec Studio’s ability to share fully formed meshes also lends itself to intuitive filesharing. Zooming in on point clouds can cause distortion, making them tricky to measure. But Ray II data can be sent directly as OBJs and STLs that are textured, polished, and ready to go—and with these meshes, it’s easy to use CAD primitives for perpendicular measurements.
Artec Studio’s built-in tools unlock a range of other applications as well, including feature extraction for design referencing. In this particular project, collected data turned out to be critical to strength analysis, carried out via simulations designed to ensure modification durability.
From forensics to the defense industry, 4C continues to find new applications for Leo and Ray II, a unique proposition in 3D scanning. No other solution merges LiDAR and handheld structured-light 3D scans so seamlessly—and new adopters are often left stunned by the results.
Having the versatility to digitize large items in any environment also has real-world benefits. In another project, 4C was charged with capturing factory machinery. Without 3D scanning, it would’ve had to cease production for 2-3 days, so surfaces could be measured. Leo reduced overall downtime to just two hours, and adding Ray II makes this approach easy to scale. Although Leo and Ray II can be deployed on their own, together they make it possible to generate a lightweight 3D model with accuracy where it matters.
*Images courtesy of 4C Creative CAD CAM Consultants.
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