| Reverse Engineering |
Reverse Engineering (RE) is the process of emulating a part and replicating its design intent. In the manufacturing industry this may involve measuring the dimensions of a machined part and sketching it within a CAD package such as Solidworks or Autodesk Inventor. The difficulty comes when trying to replicate surfaces or complex shapes. Another Industry problem is converting point clouds into useable CAD models and not simply a dumb or non parametric IGES or STEP model.
IMS provide the Australian Industry with world leading solutions for Reverse engineering. Our range of Probing devices, Laser scanners and advanced RE software ensure that our customers are able to produce feature based parts with history trees. These parts can then be manufactured by CNCs and similar machines.
Our RE solutions can be divided into 2 sections. Probing & Scanning.
Probing
This method combines the measuring and modelling process. It is ideal for prismatic parts with standard geometric features and minimal complex surfaces.
Our system comprising of the Romer Measuring arm & Dezignworks Plugin Software.
- Sketch directly inside of Solidworks or Autodesk Inventor with the use of a Romer Measuring arm.
- 7 times more efficient than traditional RE methods.
- Produce usable Solidworks and Inventor CAD files with no importing and exporting of data.
Video of Dezignworks- Sketch inside of Solidworks
Scanning: Point clouds to CAD
This method can be used to reverse engineer parts containing multiple complex surfaces. Our system comprising of the Romer measuring arm with Laser scanner and Rapidform XOR software allows point clouds to be converted into editable parametric Solidworks (.sldprt) and Inventor CAD models. Other packages only produce simple IGES or STEP files which have no editable features.
Click here for a Reverse Engineering Study conducted by the US Airforce stating that Rapidform XOR is their preferred choice for creating parametric solid models from point clouds.
Video of Rapidform XOR- Convert Point Clouds into Solidworks CAD models
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