Find someone near you with an articulated arm measurement system (romer or Faro arm). These arms can be bolted to anything and then are scanned "by hand" over whatever object you need to capture. Each time you want to record a point, you touch the stylus to the object and push the "record" button. To scan more points, hold down the record button and drag the probe over the surface.
I would caution against capturing too many points. It makes the job of fitting surfaces later more and not less difficult. If you intend on changing the dash, you only need basic info on the existing dash (where the edges are, the plane of the instrument panel and the position of services that cannot easily be moved. Then remove the instrument panel and scan the steel below it in more detail, since this is a "hard" boundary. Find the attachment holes/tappings and scan both the center point as well as the plane of the surface (together that gives you exactly the axis of the fastener). This kind of point is pretty unforgiving, you have to get it exactly right or deal with a loose rattly and vibrating panel afterwards (fate worse than death)
These kind of CMM's sold relatively cheap ($30k), are good to about .01" which means that they are not the most highly worked part of the average shop that owns them. Sometimes a call to the rep for Faro or Romer in your state will get you pointers regarding local companies that have the equipment that you could work with.
Keith  |