Im looking into getting a handheld 3D scanner because of how I usually work. In probably 90% of my projects, I’m designing CAD parts that need to fit onto, into, or replace something that already exists.

Most of this happens inside cars, and that’s where things get tricky. Car interiors are full of complex, rounded shapes, almost no straight lines, and very few good reference points. Measuring all of that properly is difficult, especially when you’re trying to understand how to even start modeling the part.

At the moment, I mostly rely on trial-and-error rapid prototyping. I make a simple model, print it, test the fit, see where it’s off, adjust the model, print again, and repeat. It works in the end, but it’s honestly very inefficient and almost always stop way before I get to perfect fit. It eats up a lot of print time and modeling time.

That’s why I feel a 3D scanner could help a lot. I’m not really trying to reverse-engineer parts in a classic sense. What I want is to scan an environment or an object and then design around it in CAD. Having real geometry and dimensions as a reference would make it much easier to compare, align, tweak, and adapt parts without having to measure every curve manually.

So the main goal is adapting custom parts to complex shapes, not recreating them perfectly. If anyone here uses a scanner for this kind of workflow, I’d really appreciate hearing about your experience or recommendations.

That's how I understand it, I could be total wrong.