An interesting possibility to obtain 3D geometry data for DeskProto is scanning an existing object. Many laser scanning systems are now available, some (lowcost) systems based on plain photo prints as well. DeskProto does combine very well with this type of geometry: a scanner does produce point cloud data (a bunch of measured points) that in most cases can be saved as polygon data (points converted to triangles), for instance in an STL file. DeskProto can directly machine based on this polygon data (very large files), without first having to reconstruct NURBS surfaces (which is a complex task). For DeskProto the STL file even does not need to describe a perfectly closed solid geometry.
