Our Expertise
in Reverse Engineering Techniques
Shape Fidelity’s comprehensive services include the post-processing of 3D scan data to meet our customers’ needs, from optimized STL output for 3D printing to fully reverse-engineered and idealized native CAD geometry.
Get StartedLeveraging Reverse Engineering
Initial Data Capture
The typical output from modern 3D scanners is a mesh or polygon data set. This initial output must be aligned in coordinate space and any required cleanup operations performed. Clean up would normally include merging of multiple scans, noise reduction, sampling, and hole-filling to produce a high quality initial polygon mesh. These operation potentially Shape Fidelity can process data from virtually any 3D scanner or source, from a handful of points collected from a touch probe to billions of polygons from high-resolution, non-contact scanning.
Mesh Cleanup, Repair and Optimization
A polygonal mesh is an ideal format for 3D printing and visualization applications. However, the raw scan data will need to be processed before it is ready for downstream applications. For some models, this is simply deleting extraneous data and/or reducing noise, but other models may require hole filling for missing data regions or defeaturing unwanted elements from the model. The amount of the data can be optimized via decimation – a process that removes triangles in flat regions and retains them in regions of high curvature, thus reducing the file size while preserving the fidelity of the model.
Other polygonal operations include offsetting, shelling, sectioning, Boolean operations and more.
Model Construction
Models for use in CAD/CAM/CAE environments can be created by contructing exact NURBS surfaces or fitting idealized surfaces to the mesh data. Resulting models can be parametrically driven or capture the exact as-built condition depending on the end-use requirement of the model. Design updates, toolpath generation, stress analysis and a host of other operations can be performed once these digital models are created.
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