3D Copier & 3D Scanner difference

It seems important to clearly distinguish between the concepts of a 3D copier and a 3D scanner. A photocopier takes a piece of paper and produces another piece of paper just like the original. A 3D copier is a device which takes a solid object and makes another one of just the same shape (let us ignore material). In fact, copy machining has been a well established technology for a long time, but that is not the main character of it which will help us to identify the 3D Copier & 3D Scanner difference.

A scanner however, in 2D, not only inputs a page of text into the computer, but can also recognize the characters and figures, thus providing a text file and graphical structures. Similarly, a 3D scanner will not only capture raw data from the object, but the data will be interpreted and some computer model will be created. Now, not only may a single copy be generated, but knowledge of the shape is obtained, and thus we can derive new shapes, make variations, analyze properties and determine characteristic quantities such as volume or surface area through 3d scanning.