A special case of 3-D optical measurements and reverse engineering for automotive applications: the Ferrari 250 Mille Miglia

The complete process of 3D optical measurement, view alignment, mesh creation, production of CAD models, and rapid prototypation of a prestigious historic car is presented. The optical digitiser OPL-3D, developed in our laboratory, is the sophisticated instrument that allowed the accurate gauging of the car. The instrument has been used in different set ups, to optimise the acquisition speed while maintaining the resolution required for large areas as well as for fine details of the car body. The work highlights the impact that the novel 3D optical measurement instrumentation, based on incoherent light, whole field projection, in conjunction with current point cloud elaboration tools, with modern CAD environments, and with rapid prototyping systems, can have when applied to the automotive domain, for reverse design and engineering, for scaled model production, and for accurate 3D visualization of prestigious objects in virtual museums.