3D Reverse Engineering in 10 steps
3D Reverse engineering is a powerful way to create digital designs from a physical part and it can be a valuable tool for speeding up your product development. Using 3D reverse engineering software is important when you want to create new parts that reference or incorporate older designs, where the original CAD design isn’t accessible. 3D scanners measure complex objects very quickly, but this is not enough to convert a physical object into digital object.
Many people think that the result of 3D Scanning is a CAD model. Unfortunately, in reality the biggest challenge people encounter when converting physical objects to digital ones is converting 3D scanned meshes data into a useable solid (CAD model). This can take a long time and is not an instant process. This is the reason our 3D reverse engineering software QUICKSURFACE to be created.
Read here how to convert a 3D scan mesh and create professional CAD model by using QUICKSURFACE software.
It is best if you download and install QUICKSURFACE and try it yourself. It is FREE.
Follow the simple steps below to be able to get surfaces from the scan data and process them further in other CAD packages using our 3D reverse engineering software.
Step 1: Import a scanned mesh into QUICKSURFACE- 3D reverse engineering software
Import any mesh from scan in QUICKSURFACE. The mesh has to have topology so the format of the file should be OBJ, STL or PLY. STL is the most common file format used in 3D Scanning. For long range scanners, the data can be imported using PTX file format. QUICKSURFACE 3d reverse engineering software allows you to load any size mesh, making it even more versatile.
Step 2: Use Mesh Selection tools
Use the Mesh Selection to mark the features like planes, cylinders, spheres, free form patches, revolved and extruded surfaces. QUICKSURFACE 3D reverse engineering software has simple to use tools to quickly extract areas of interest. For example, the magic wand, brush and free form selection allows you to identify the areas that represent features or free form surfaces.
Step 3: Create primitives as surfaces or reference geometries
Construct shapes by selecting what type of feature needs to be fit. QUICKSURFACE quickly reconstructs planes, cylinders, cones and spheres. Then, create relations between them as perpendicularity, parallelism and coincidence.
You can also create reference geometry like lines and points for use in align mesh to space operation for correctly positioning the object into the world coordinate system.
Step 4: Align the mesh into the world coordinate system
With QUICKSURFACE 3D reverse engineering software you can position the object into the world coordinate system using the extracted primitives. The interactive definition of the coordinate system allows the user to adjust the correct orientation of the object..
Step 5: Create 2D Sketching with our 3D reverse engineering software
Interactive sectioning allows you to extract reference points for 2D Sketching. For the purposes of lofting – you can also create multiple sections at once. You can use dimensions and constraints to create accurate sketches like in any other CAD package.
Step 6: Use Trim command
You can create surfaces or solids by using mutual trim operation or boolean operations on solids. The coloured display and diagnostic tools allow you to identify the issues while performing these operations.
Step 7: Build Patterns with our 3D reverse engineering software
You can build linear or circular patterns for repeated objects. The mirror object tool will also save you a lot of time.
Step 8: Create Round edges
With QUICKSURFACE you can create fillets or chamfers where needed. The chamfer and fillet operations provide a real-time analyser. Just drag the arrow to define the fillet radius on the screen and see immediately the deviation of the fillets against the reference mesh. All this in real-time!
Step 9: Use Deviation Analyser
Control the accuracy of your reconstruction with the efficient distance colour map. Compare the CAD model against the reference mesh at any time of your process.
Step 10: Export the results to other packages for further use
Lastly, export the results in industry standard file formats like IGES or STEP for use in other CAD packages or use QS Connect to transfer the parametric tree into SOLIDWORKS.
In conclusion
With intuitive and fast user interface, equipped with deviation control at every step,3D reverse engineering software – QUICKSURFACE makes the Reverse Engineering process easy and quick, but with powerful and with professional accuracy.
Download QUICKSURFACE now for FREE and try it yourself.
