Reverse Engineering Process Overview
From a mesh or point cloud created by essentially any scanner with adequate accuracy and resolution, a Design X Essentials and Mastercam user can process this data to create a fully-featured Step or Parasolid model that would act as if it came from any history-based CAD solids modeler. Users would step their way through a modeling process much as if they were creating the part in a history-based CAD modeler. But Best Fit Features are extracted from the mesh instead of getting created from scratch. This process would hold true for simple, prismatic shapes as well as extremely complex, 3-axis, or multiaxis complex models.
The key to our CNC Programming success with these derived solid models is that all model features are preserved. In traditional reverse engineering software products designed to reverse engineer from mesh or point cloud data, the resultant models are “scan-based” and not terribly usable in CAM software. Cylinders and fillets, for example, wouldn’t derive “true circles” but rather hundreds to thousands of tiny facets would combine to approximate the shape of the radius. This type of point-to-point machining process would lead to a very large and inefficient G-Code programs that also wouldn’t be very editable.
Software for Reverse Engineering – Design X Essentials, used for Mastercam
Design X Essentials, used for Mastercam is an OEM’ed version of the very powerful, OQTON (Formally 3D Systems) reverse engineering software, Design X Essentials. Mastercam users of Cimquest are able to purchase Design X Essentials at almost a 40% discount from list price, through to the end of 2023!
DXE functions very much like the part modeling environment of a CAD product, such as Solidworks or NX. The user is able to create planes, sketches, constraints, dimensions, features and have solid and surface modeling tools that are akin to a highly efficient solids modeler, but the initial data used is imported from a scan or point cloud.
Contact Cimquest, Inc. for more information.
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