Laser Scanning or 3d object scanning as it is sometimes known is a quick way of getting objects from the real world into a computer for a variety of uses.

3d Laser scanning lends itself particularly well to several fields including the Film and Television Industries, Sculpting, Modelmaking, Jewellery making, Marketing and Media projects, Web Visualisation, Rapid prototyping (RP) and Reverse engineering.

The procces is actually called laser stripe scanning because of the methods used to capture the object geometry. A laser light is split into a fine line and shone at the obect revealing a stripe that a camera then captures and turns into digital data. This happens at a rate of between 25 to 30 stripes per second.