Hi! Sorry for the mega delayed response, I didn't get notification that you'd commented.

Firstly, thank you for the positive comment, I just found this project again as I'm in the process of starting a clock using the WS2812B led strips.

My first thought on your problem could be one of two things.
1) Memory - as detailed in my write-up, I had serious issues with memory throughout, one of the main symptoms of this was stuff just going weird (the other was it doing nothing at all).
2) Multiple data lines - I had two data lines in the end (stripPin and stripPinB, etc), which drove roughly 150 LED's each. Did you account for that in yours? If not, you could be trying to output some garbage data from a table to the LED causing it not to appear as expected.

I hope this helps and wish you success in your thesis project! If you've already completed it, I'd love to know what the problem was and how you resolved it!

How does this work and what are the output files? I.e. do I just place an item on the top, and it scans a full 360° 3D model and outputs to a cad file?

Could I use this to scan a broken part for something (say a damaged plastic cover) and then push the file through my 3D printer to make a replacement?