Exact surfaces over the scan.

Select an area of the scan, a roof, a door face or a bonnet, and one smooth NURBS surface follows it. Set its lines by count or by tolerance, typical and worst; drag corners, points and lines onto the scan; and colour it by deviation or curvature before you keep it.

• Fit a grid of up to 8 × 8 patches in one go, solved together so they share position, tangent and curvature along every join.
• Put the joins where the part has them, along guide curves you draw on the scan.
• Paint dirt, tape, dents or badges for the fit to ignore; small holes are bridged in a prepared copy, and the original scan isn't changed.
• Trim the accepted surface back to the selection's outline, or export it straight to STEP.

Try it in 3D

Build a panel's surface patch by patch. Click four corners on the scan for the first patch, then pull any free edge outwards: a new patch grows from it, joined curvature-smooth to its parent and fitted to the scan when you let go. Shape each by its control points, fit them together, join them with radii or blends, trim them to the outline and openings, and add them to the model as exact NURBS.

• Seven pages in working order: Create, Layout, Controls, Fit, Connect, Trim and Finish.
• Start from four corners, contour lines, guide curves, a region of the scan, or an automatic layout of the whole scan.
• Smooth every seam in one solve, and mirror patches across the centre line.
• The patches stay editable in Panels after they go into the model.

Try it in 3D

Put one smooth, trimmed surface over an open panel scan: a wing, a door skin, a bonnet. It is laid out as one grid from four corners, carried smoothly past notches in the edge such as a wheel arch, then trimmed back to the scan's outline, with its openings trimmed out.

• Detail is added wherever the skin misses the tolerance you set.
• Light, Coarse, Standard or Fine; Light gives the fewest control points and the calmest reflections.
• The result says how close the skin is to the scan, how closely the trim follows its edge, and how thick it can be made before the offset would fold.
• One button takes it straight to Thicken.

Try it in 3D

Turn a whole vehicle body scan into one smooth skin: three exact NURBS surfaces, the same on both sides, trimmed with a flange band round every opening. Then thicken it into a solid, ready to export.

• Finds the plane of symmetry, the outer skin and every opening, and names them: grille, wheel arches, lamps, side openings.
• Reshape any outline, draw where the skin stops beside an opening, or add openings the analysis didn't find.
• Only one side scanned? The skin is fitted to that side and its mirror image.
• Badges, vents or damage you select on the scan are skinned smoothly over.

• MeasuredOn a full scan of a classic roadster body: 0.06 mm median distance to scan points held back from the fit, and a 4.000 mm solid, in about two minutes

Try it in 3D

Choose the mesh, how many patches (from 4 to 8,192) and how many control points each patch has, and press Go. The patches come back as one surface body, joined along their shared edges, with their distance from the scan measured both ways.

• On a closed part, one smooth surface is fitted and divided into the patches, so neighbours meet without sharp edges or folds, whatever their shape.
• An open scan is laid out to its own edge; holes bigger than the limit you set stay open, with the patches ending on their edge.
• Defects in the scan are cut out of Auto Surface's own copy and surfaced over. The scan itself isn't changed.
• On a door or a bonnet with flanges and openings, select the outer skin and surface just that.

• UndoOne step takes the patches back

Reshape a surface by hand: drag its control points one at a time or a whole row at once, across the view, straight off the surface, or along X, Y or Z, or step them by exact amounts. Trims and holes move with the surface, and on a sewn body a join that was smooth stays smooth.

Push open edges further out so a surface can be trimmed cleanly or meet a neighbour: one edge, part of one between two points, or every open edge of a body, which extend together and stay sewn. The visible surface never moves.

• Straight carries the surface straight on, and never curls over.
• Flowing keeps bending the way the edge does: on a 100 mm radius, 40 mm further on it is within 0.05 mm of the true cylinder.
• Curvature carries the surface's own shape on exactly, for short extensions.

Refit a surface on an even, smoother or smaller control net, never moving the visible surface further than the limit you set (0.1 mm to start), with its edges kept on it. Ask for as few control points as the limit allows, smooth out ripples, and on a sewn body make every join tangent.

Surfaces that cross each other are cut where they meet, and there are five ways to cut them yourself: a line drawn on the surfaces; lines or a spline pushed through them along the view; the scan's outline as seen from a direction; closed loops from a Design sketch; or a cut back from picked edges by a set distance. Click the pieces to keep. Cuts follow the profile exactly, so small rounds stay round and corners stay sharp.

Fill the gap between two surface edges, trimmed edges included, or between lines of joined edges. Choose a shaped blend that meets the surfaces tangent (G1), curvature-continuous (G2) so reflections run straight through, or at a crease (G0); an exact radius; or a variable radius drawn on a graph along the join.

• Match the scan: the blend's middle is laid onto the scan while its edges and tangents stay put.
• Read the radius off the scan along the join, point by point.
• Cut the two surfaces back to where the blend meets them, or leave them exactly as they were.

Every place two of the surfaces you pick could join is drawn in bright red. Click a join to sew it, or sew them all. Edges that don't quite meet are pulled together until they are the same edge, and a corner shared by three or four surfaces becomes one point. Unsew puts the originals back, still editable.

Add thickness inside, outside or on both sides to make a closed solid. Connected sheets thicken together into one, and trimmed openings get inside walls. Or make just the offset surface, or a directional solid carried straight back along one direction.

• If the thickness you ask for would fold on a tight curve, the largest thickness that passes the checks is found for you, to 0.1 mm, and shown before you accept it.
• Anything short of perfect is reported, never hidden: how much thinner the wall is where it had to be, and any edge left open.

Deviation colours every visible surface and solid by its distance from its own source scan, measured at full resolution, with the worst spot marked on the key. Curvature shows where surfaces bulge, hollow, or bend one way only. Zebra stripes are a reflection: stripes that carry on smoothly across a join mean the curvature matches there too.

• Edit the colour key's bands and colours, save it, and make it the one every session starts with.

To design takes surface work that isn't in the model yet, contours drawn on the scan and fitted surfaces, into the Design tab. Save As on the File tab writes the model as STEP or IGES, and Panels and Surface from Mesh can also export STEP straight from their panels.