Not to be pedantic, but not in all cases. Modern systems use additional video data context to produce surfaces rather than simpler point-in-space data that older scanners did(often laser, or sometimes physical touch systems). This sophistication cuts down on the clean-up and geometry creation after the fact.
My original point was that the work necessary these days is vastly less than it used to be. The first cmm-scanned surface I dealt with took a crew of 3 more than a month to turn into something usable. The last set of parts I had scanned took an afternoon and we had parametric solids by the next day with a crew of me :)
