CAD/CAM Methods for Reverse Engineering: A Case Study of Re-engineering Jewelry

Abstract

AbstractReverse engineering is the process of obtaining a geometric CAD model from 3D points acquired by scanning an existing physical model. It is widely used in numerous applications, such as manufacturing, industrial design and jewelry design and reproduction. We argue that for creating editable CAD models meant for manufacturing it is more appropriate to use feature-based constraint-based representations, since they capture design intent. We provide a framework for reverse engineering of small objects and in particular jewelry that combines cross section identification, feature and constraint information exploitation to attain robust, accurate and editable CAD models. First, we extract certain candidate features for describing our point cloud. These features are then reconstructed to describe the solid object. Constraints are automatically detected and maintained. Constraints capture design intent and provide robustness guaranties. Voxel inspired techniques are also employed to describe repeated patte...