reverse engineering

Reverse engineering is the process of generating a digital model from its physical counterpart. First, the real physical part is scanned (using a digitizer or any kind of scanner) to obtain a usually dense point cloud. There are sophisticated algorithms that take an arbitrary point cloud and convert it into a digital model. There are various representations of a model. It can be a polygonal mesh or a set of nurbs surfaces (stitched together) or some other mathematical representation (subdivision surfaces, implicit reps are also popular).

Geomagic, Paraform, Surfacer, RapidForm are some of the popular reverse engineering products. More abt these companies and their products in my next post...