(NVision: Coppell, TX) -- Materials Analysis Inc., a Dallas engineering firm specializing in litigation support, is using noncontact 3-D scanning to provide critical assistance in product liability cases. The technology is invaluable for showing details that are invisible to the eye or that might require destructive forms of analysis.

“The high levels of accuracy provided by noncontact scanning can often rule out hypothesized causes of accidents,” says Mark Allen Lewis, staff engineer for Materials Analysis. “In one case they even served as a benchmark to prove that a defect was too small to be adequately documented, preventing the evidence from being irreversibly altered by unnecessary sectioning. Another key advantage of scanning is the ability to quickly generate electronic solid models that are much easier for nontechnical people to visualize than blueprints.”

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