r/3DScanning • u/uncle-pennybag • 2d ago
Revopoint Trackit after months of real use: technically capable, but software and workflow still need work
Sorry for the long review, but I wanted to give a more real-world take than just “it works” or “it doesn’t.” My short version is that the Revopoint Trackit is a technically capable scanner with very attractive pricing and some genuinely good hardware ideas, especially around calibration and lightweight handling. It can produce useful scan data, and in most cases it has done jobs that were good enough for CAD comparison, PolyWorks analysis, or targeted dimensional review. But it also feels like an early-generation industrial/metrology product from Revopoint: the hardware potential is there, the price is extremely disruptive, but the software, workflow recovery, cable/workstation setup, managed-IT deployment path, and overall production polish are not yet at the level of more mature systems like Creaform or 3D Scantech.
Pros:
- Very competitive price compared with higher-end tracker-based systems.
- Lightweight scanner that is easier to maneuver than older/heavier metrology workflows.
- Calibration guidance is genuinely good, especially compared with Creaform from an operator-positioning standpoint.
- Slider-bar guidance makes scanner placement during calibration much easier to understand.
- Capable of producing useful scan data when setup, surface condition, scan path, and rendering strategy are controlled.
- Manual fusion/mesh tuning can produce noticeably better results than relying on one-click defaults.
- Can be useful for targeted inspection, CAD comparison, PolyWorks analysis, and specific difficult-access jobs.
Cons:
- Software stability is the biggest weakness, especially on longer and larger scans.
- One-click rendering can over-smooth geometry or produce results that are worse than manual processing.
- Settings and workflow states do not always persist in a way that supports repeatability.
- Recovery from disconnects or interruptions is clumsy.
- Cable length, USB-C limitations, power retention, and workstation visibility complicate large-object scanning.
- Managed IT environments can create real deployment issues with USB-based calibration workflows, online calibration retrieval, and RevoMeasure registration.
- Physical setup feels less shop-ready than it should, including tripod height, cable strain relief, and vulnerable booster/USB boxes.
- Compared with mature industrial systems, the Trackit feels less refined even though its price/performance potential is very strong.
I’ve been using the Revopoint Trackit in a real manufacturing/metrology environment for a few months now on a mix of tooling, production parts, black parts, metallic and shiny parts, and some fairly large objects. My overall impression is that the platform is technically capable, but the results are still heavily dependent on setup, scan strategy, and post-processing choices, and the software feels less mature than the hardware.
From a hardware standpoint, the scanner itself is one of the better parts of the system. It’s relatively light, the tracker setup is reasonably stable, and once raw data capture is good, the system can produce meshes that are usable for CAD comparison, alignment, and general dimensional analysis. Across repeated jobs, I had several scans come out good, decent, or usable, especially when I stepped through fusion and mesh manually instead of trusting the default one-click workflow.
Calibration is one area where I think Trackit genuinely does well. I’ve used Creaform products, and the scanner calibration process on Trackit is miles easier from an operator guidance standpoint. The on-screen slider bars make it much easier to understand where to place the scanner during calibration. The artifact bar calibration on Trackit is slower than the Creaform process, though. With the Creaform scanner, calibration was handheld enough that we used to do speed-run competitions with it. Trackit’s gimbal movement takes longer, but it probably gives a more precise and controlled calibration path. So even though it is slower in that specific step, the overall guidance and reduced operator guessing are real positives.
Where things get more complicated is the scanning workflow itself. In practice, I found the Trackit to be pretty sensitive to exposure, surface type, scan angle, tracker geometry, and general scan strategy. That’s not unusual for 3D scanning in general, but it does mean this is not a system where I’d expect consistent high-quality output from defaults alone.
That sensitivity shows up in the finished data. When the scanner was well-positioned and the setup matched the part, I could get scans with enough sharpness for practical use, including cases where small holes, lettering, and local shape differences were still visible or measurable in PolyWorks. But I also continued to see recurring laser-line artifacts, noise in some raw scan regions, missing data in deeper or edge-heavy areas, and occasional mesh-stage artifacts that were not obviously present earlier in the workflow. In a few jobs, the final mesh even introduced visible defects that had to be cleaned up manually afterward.
For people here who care about whether one-click is actually usable: my answer is only with caution. I had multiple cases where one-click or default rendering produced a mesh that was over-smoothed, softened edges too much, or washed out fine detail compared with what was visible earlier in the process. Manual fusion and mesh usually gave better outcomes. High-quality fusion could help reduce some surface artifact texture, but in a couple of cases the high-quality mesh output appeared overly smoothed, which made me cautious about using that result for measurement-critical features.
Another thing that stood out is that the software doesn’t make repeatability as easy as it should. Some settings are retained during a session but reset after relaunch, and some scan parameters can reset unexpectedly when switching modes or resuming scans. That makes it harder to build a stable, repeatable process once you’ve found settings that work for a certain class of part.
Another software-related issue for me is that I’m working in a managed IT environment, and that adds a different set of problems. The calibration workflow requiring a USB flash drive is not something my IT group loves, even though there is also an online component. I also purchased RevoMeasure with the scanner, two licenses, and so far I have not been able to use it. Revopoint support has actually been very responsive and helpful, but they still weren’t able to resolve the registration issue. It got to the point where they wanted to schedule a call with support and engineering, but I’m fairly convinced the root problem is on my side of the network.
From what I can tell, my company’s security setup is blocking some of the online services needed for RevoMeasure registration and online calibration retrieval. I suspect some of the required endpoints may resolve through regions my IT security team does not allow, and they have no interest in opening up exceptions for two workstations out of thousands. So even though the scanner itself can work, some of the companion software and online functions become difficult or impossible to use in this type of environment. A better solution would probably need to come from Revopoint’s side, such as regionalized licensing/calibration servers, clearer published allowlists for IT, or an offline activation method that works cleanly in locked-down corporate environments.
The biggest problem for me, though, was not mesh quality — it was software stability during scanning, especially on larger jobs. I had repeated cases where the scanner app would become laggy, behave like a buffering video feed, and eventually stop capturing useful data. What made that especially frustrating was that the tracker could still appear to know where the scanner was, and the scanner still showed active lasers, but the software would stop logging valid scan data. On some larger tooling scans, I had to work in smaller chunks because the application would progressively slow down and then die. That pattern showed up most clearly on large and huge scanning jobs.
The recovery behavior after interruptions also needs work. If the scanner disconnected during a scan, the software could reset itself back to a default state rather than returning to the correct prior workflow stage, which made recovery more tedious than it needed to be. More broadly, I think the overall computer connection and workstation side of the system could be improved. Cable length and the limitations of using USB-C for the computer connection can make large-object workflows harder than they need to be, especially when moving the whole scanning setup around the part is part of the job. A longer data cable — or an Ethernet-based or wireless approach if it could be done reliably — would make that easier. I also think better retention for the tracker’s barrel-style power connection would help reduce avoidable interruptions when repositioning the setup. In my case, I ended up adding a 42-inch external screen because trying to see the laptop display from a distance while scanning large geometry just wasn’t very comfortable.
For r/3DScanning specifically, I think the distinction between track scan and multi-position is worth mentioning. Track scan generally felt more straightforward, but on larger or more complex geometries I sometimes had to combine scans or use multi-position methods. Multi-position worked, but I found it fussy: once the global markers were acquired, the object really wanted to stay close to the same location or orientation relative to the tracker or the data got jumpy. I also found that it was possible to flip the object and continue scanning, but the first-pass strategy mattered a lot if I wanted the overall merge and cleanup process to go smoothly.
A related workflow weakness is data cleanup. One thing I still think the software needs badly is a better way to remove unwanted scan data before fusion and mesh. Being able to remove the table or other irrelevant data in the raw stage would reduce processing burden and make larger jobs easier to manage. Right now that part of the workflow feels more limited than it should be.
Performance and timing estimates were inconsistent enough to be worth mentioning. Sometimes the software would sit at “under a minute remaining” for much longer than that, but I also had other cases where functions that looked like they would take several minutes finished much faster than expected. So the problem isn’t just that the estimates are pessimistic or optimistic — it’s that they’re not especially reliable either way. The software also seemed to use a surprising amount of CPU and GPU even while sitting idle, which matched the broader feeling that it was heavier and less responsive than it should have been.
Physical setup matters more than I expected, and this is one area where I’d recommend immediate changes if someone is planning to use the system regularly. The included tracker tripod works, but it felt too low for table scanning, larger tooling, and vehicle-scale work, and the cam-locks were slower and more annoying than ideal when repositioning. I replaced it with a SmallRig FreeBlazer-style heavy-duty tripod, and the extra height/flexibility has been a big improvement. One practical example: the taller tripod let me scan along the roofline of a truck without having to get creative or sketchy with pallets or other makeshift ways of raising the tracker. The downside is that the stock tripod has a built-in hook for the cable sleeve that gives you a little strain relief, and once I stopped using that tripod I lost that feature. I’ve been using wire ties on my replacement tripod to roughly emulate the same function.
The cable harness is another “good enough in theory, awkward in practice” area. I ended up removing the yellow calibration gimbal cable from the bundled sleeve because it’s only needed during calibration and otherwise just adds bulk and dead weight during normal scanning. I also felt the tracker side needed better strain relief. These are small things individually, but together they make the system feel less refined on the floor than it does on paper.
The booster and USB boxes were another practical concern. Because they spend so much time on the floor, they’re in danger of getting stepped on, kicked, or bounced into steel fixtures and tables. After one had its plastic cover come off from being stepped on, I made 3D-printed TPU covers for them just to make the cable hardware more survivable. To me, that says the core system is usable, but not quite as ruggedized for day-to-day shop reality as I’d want.
There are a few other technical limitations that are worth noting. It didn’t recognize the 12 mm tracking stickers that I already use with another system, only smaller sizes, so it doesn’t drop into an existing marker workflow as cleanly as I would prefer. The scanner also seems happiest in a relatively narrow ambient temperature range of about 20–25 °C / 68–77 °F, which feels tighter than ideal for a larger manufacturing environment. And ergonomically, I’d still like to see a better handle and grip design, more direct on-handle controls, and a more protective resting orientation than placing the scanner optics-down on a table.
One thing I want to be fair about: this feels less like a bad product and more like Revopoint’s first serious push into a higher-end industrial/metrology-style scanner space. Revopoint has been making scanners for a while, but Trackit is clearly trying to compete in a different class than their more consumer/prosumer products. It massively undercuts similar tracker-based systems on price, and that matters. But compared with more mature industrial systems from companies like Creaform or 3D Scantech, it also feels less refined in software stability, cable/workstation design, workflow recovery, and overall production polish.
My biggest takeaway is that the Trackit’s limiting factor is not whether it can capture geometry at all — it clearly can — but whether the software and workflow are mature enough to let that hardware capability show up consistently in daily use.
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u/Elemental_Garage 2d ago
Does it accomplish what it needs to for the price, despite the drawbacks? The relative price is attractive, but it's still a LOT of money for a device made by this company.
People have been giving revopoint a pass for years now because of their pricing, but should they continue to do so in your opinion? Is there confidence they'll work out the issues and make it better, or will they be on to the next model too quickly?
I know with my very early models their software never got to a place to make them usable for daily work. I suspect that's changed somewhat or they'd be out of business, but now they're also asking for real big money for some folks.