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Introduction to Reverse Engineering

Chapter · October 2007

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-84628-856-2_1

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Chapter 1

Introduction to Reverse Engineering

Vinesh Raja, University of Warwick, UK

Abstract
This chapter introduces readers to the term reverse engineering (RE), and to the associ-
ated techniques that can be used for scanning physical parts. In addition, the chapter
presents the process of reverse engineering and the strategy for scanning and converting
the scanned data into a 3-D surface or solid model.

1.1 Introduction
In today’s intensely competitive global market, product enterprises are con-
stantly seeking new ways to shorten lead times for new product developments
that meet all customer expectations. In general, product enterprise has invested

Figure 1.1. Product development cycle

2 1 Introduction to Reverse Engineering

in CADCAM, rapid prototyping, and a range of new technologies that provide

business benefits. Reverse engineering (RE) is now considered one of the tech-
nologies that provide business benefits in shortening the product development
cycle. Figure 1.1 below depicts how RE allows the possibilities of closing the loop
between what is “as designed” and what is “actually manufactured”.

1.2 What Is Reverse Engineering?

Engineering is the process of designing, manufacturing, assembling, and main-
taining products and systems. There are two types of engineering, forward engi-
neering and reverse engineering. Forward engineering is the traditional process
of moving from high-level abstractions and logical designs to the physical im-
plementation of a system. In some situations, there may be a physical part/
product without any technical details, such as drawings, bills-of-material, or
without engineering data. The process of duplicating an existing part, subassem-
bly, or product, without drawings, documentation, or a computer model is
known as reverse engineering. Reverse engineering is also defined as the process
of obtaining a geometric CAD model from 3-D points acquired by scanning/
digitizing existing parts/products. The process of digitally capturing the physical
entities of a component, referred to as reverse engineering (RE), is often defined
by researchers with respect to their specific task (Motavalli & Shamsaasef 1996).
Abella et al. (1994) described RE as, “the basic concept of producing a part based
on an original or physical model without the use of an engineering drawing”.
Yau et al.(1993) define RE, as the “process of retrieving new geometry from
a manufactured part by digitizing and modifying an existing CAD model”.
Reverse engineering is now widely used in numerous applications, such as
manufacturing, industrial design, and jewelry design and reproduction For ex-
ample, when a new car is launched on the market, competing manufacturers
may buy one and disassemble it to learn how it was built and how it works. In
software engineering, good source code is often a variation of other good source
code. In some situations, such as automotive styling, designers give shape to
their ideas by using clay, plaster, wood, or foam rubber, but a CAD model is
needed to manufacture the part. As products become more organic in shape,
designing in CAD becomes more challenging and there is no guarantee that the
CAD representation will replicate the sculpted model exactly.
Reverse engineering provides a solution to this problem because the physical
model is the source of information for the CAD model. This is also referred to as
the physical-to-digital process depicted in Figure 1.2. Another reason for reverse
engineering is to compress product development cycle times. In the intensely
competitive global market, manufacturers are constantly seeking new ways to
shorten lead times to market a new product. Rapid product development (RPD)
refers to recently developed technologies and techniques that assist manufactur-
ers and designers in meeting the demands of shortened product development
time. For example, injection-molding companies need to shorten tool and die
 1.3 Why Use Reverse Engineering? 3

Figure 1.2. Physical-to-digital process

development time drastically. By using reverse engineering, a three-dimensional

physical product or clay mock-up can be quickly captured in the digital form,
remodeled, and exported for rapid prototyping/tooling or rapid manufacturing
using multi-axis CNC machining techniques.

1.3 Why Use Reverse Engineering?

Following are some of the reasons for using reverse engineering:
• The original manufacturer no longer exists, but a customer needs the prod-
uct, e.g., aircraft spares required typically after an aircraft has been in service
for several years.
• The original manufacturer of a product no longer produces the product, e.g.,
the original product has become obsolete.
• The original product design documentation has been lost or never existed.
• Creating data to refurbish or manufacture a part for which there are no CAD
data, or for which the data have become obsolete or lost.
• Inspection and/or Quality Control–Comparing a fabricated part to its CAD
description or to a standard item.
• Some bad features of a product need to be eliminated e.g., excessive wear
might indicate where a product should be improved.
• Strengthening the good features of a product based on long-term usage.
• Analyzing the good and bad features of competitors’ products.
• Exploring new avenues to improve product performance and features.
• Creating 3-D data from a model or sculpture for animation in games and
movies.
• Creating 3-D data from an individual, model or sculpture to create, scale, or
reproduce artwork.
• Architectural and construction documentation and measurement.
• Fitting clothing or footwear to individuals and determining the anthropome-
try of a population.
4 1 Introduction to Reverse Engineering

• Generating data to create dental or surgical prosthetics, tissue engineered

body parts, or for surgical planning.
• Documentation and reproduction of crime scenes.
The above list is not exhaustive and there are many more reasons for using
reverse engineering, than documented above.

1.4 Reverse Engineering–The Generic Process

The generic process of reverse engineering is a three-phase process as depicted in
Figure 1.3. The three phases are scanning, point processing, and application-
specific geometric model development. Reverse engineering strategy must con-
sider the following:

Figure 1.3. Reverse engineering – the generic process

 1.5 Phase 1–Scanning 5

• Reason for reverse engineering a part

• Number of parts to be scanned–single or multiple
• Part size–large or small
• Part complexity–simple or complex
• Part material–hard or soft
• Part finish–shiny or dull
• Part geometry–organic or prismatic and internal or external
• Accuracy required–linear or volumetric

1.5 Phase 1–Scanning

This phase is involved with the scanning strategy–selecting the correct scanning
technique, preparing the part to be scanned, and performing the actual scanning
to capture information that describes all geometric features of the part such as
steps, slots, pockets, and holes. Three-dimensional scanners are employed to
scan the part geometry, producing clouds of points, which define the surface
geometry. These scanning devices are available as dedicated tools or as add-ons
to the existing computer numerically controlled (CNC) machine tools. There are
two distinct types of scanners, contact and noncontact.

1.5.1 Contact Scanners

These devices employ contact probes that automatically follow the contours of
a physical surface (Figure 1.4). In Ithe current marketplace, contact probe

Figure 1.4. Contact scanning touch probe. Originally published in Rapid Prototyping Casebook, McDonald,
J.A., Ryal, C.J. and Wimpenny, D.I., 2001, © John Wiley and Sons Limited. Reproduced with permission.
6 1 Introduction to Reverse Engineering

scanning devices are based on CMM technologies, with a tolerance range of

+0.01 to 0.02 mm. However, depending on the size of the part scanned, contact
methods can be slow because each point is generated sequentially at the tip of
the probe. Tactile device probes must deflect to register a point; hence, a de-
gree of contact pressure is maintained during the scanning process. This con-
tact pressure limits the use of contact devices because soft, tactile materials
such as rubber cannot be easily or accurately scanned.

1.5.2 Noncontact Scanners

A variety of noncontact scanning technologies available on the market capture

data with no physical part contact. Noncontact devices use lasers, optics, and
charge-coupled device (CCD) sensors to capture point data, as shown in Fig-
ure 1.5. Although these devices capture large amounts of data in a relatively short
space of time, there are a number of issues related to this scanning technology.
• The typical tolerance of noncontact scanning is within ±0.025 to 0.2 mm.
• Some noncontact systems have problems generating data describing surfaces,
which are parallel to the axis of the laser (Figure 1.6).
• Noncontact devices employ light within the data capture process. This cre-
ates problems when the light impinges on shiny surfaces, and hence some
surfaces must be prepared with a temporary coating of fine powder before
scanning.

Figure 1.5. Optical scanning device. Originally published in Rapid Prototyping Casebook, McDonald, J.A.,
Ryal, C.J. and Wimpenny, D.I., 2001, © John Wiley and Sons Limited. Reproduced with permission.
 1.6 Phase 2–Point Processing 7

Figure 1.6. Vertical faces–touch probe versus a laser. Originally published in Rapid Prototyping Casebook,
McDonald, J.A., Ryal, C.J. and Wimpenny, D.I., 2001, © John Wiley and Sons Limited. Reproduced with
permission.

These issues restrict the use of remote sensing devices to areas in engineering,
where the accuracy of the information generated is secondary to the speed of
data capture. However, as research and laser development in optical technology
continue, the accuracy of the commercially available noncontact scanning de-
vice is beginning to improve.
The output of the scanning phase is point cloud data sets in the most conven-
ient format. Typically, the RE software provides a variety of output formats such
as raw (X, Y, Z values separated by space or commas).

1.6 Phase 2–Point Processing

This phase involves importing the point cloud data, reducing the noise in the
data collected, and reducing the number of points. These tasks are performed
using a range of predefined filters. It is extremely important that the users have
very good understanding of the filter algorithms so that they know which filter is
the most appropriate for each task. This phase also allows us to merge multiple
scan data sets. Sometimes, it is necessary to take multiple scans of the part to
ensure that all required features have been scanned. This involves rotating the
part; hence each scan datum becomes very crucial. Multiple scan planning has
direct impact on the point processing phase. Good datum planning for multiple
scanning will reduce the effort required in the point processing phase and also
avoid introduction of errors from merging multiple scan data. A wide range of
commercial software is available for point processing.
The output of the point processing phase is a clean , merged, point cloud data
set in the most convenient format. This phase also supports most of the proprie-
tary formats mentioned above in the scanning phase.
8 1 Introduction to Reverse Engineering

1.7 Phase 3–Application Geometric Model Development

In the same way that developments in rapid prototyping and tooling technolo-
gies are helping to shorten dramatically the time taken to generate physical rep-
resentations from CAD models, current RE technologies are helping to reduce
the time to create electronic CAD models from existing physical representations.
The need to generate CAD information from physical components will arise
frequently throughout any product introduction process.
The generation of CAD models from point data is probably the most com-
plex activity within RE because potent surface fitting algorithms are required to
generate surfaces that accurately represent the three-dimensional information
described within the point cloud data sets. Most CAD systems are not designed
to display and process large amounts of point data; as a result new RE modules
or discrete software packages are generally needed for point processing. Gener-
ating surface data from point cloud data sets is still a very subjective process,
although feature-based algorithms are beginning to emerge that will enable
engineers to interact with the point cloud data to produce complete solid mod-
els for current CAD environments.
The applications of RE for generating CAD data are equally as important as
the technology which supports it. A manager’s decision to employ RE technolo-
gies should be based on specific business needs.
This phase depends very much on the real purpose for reverse engineering.
For example, if we scanned a broken injection molding tool to produce a new
tool, we would be interested in the geometric model and also in the ISO G code
data that can be used to produce a replacement tool in the shortest possible time
using a multi-axis CNC machine. One can also use reverse engineering to ana-
lyze “as designed” to “as manufactured”. This involves importing the as de-
signed CAD model and superimposing the scanned point cloud data set of the
manufactured part. The RE software allows the user to compare the two data
sets (as designed to as manufactured). This process is also used for inspecting
manufactured parts. Reverse engineering can also be used to scan existing hip
joints and to design new artificial hips joint around patient- specific pelvic data.
This creates the opportunity for customized artificial joints for each patient.
The output of this phase is geometric model in one of the proprietary formats
such as IGES, VDA, STL, DXF, OBJ, VRML, ISO G Code, etc.
This chapter defined the term “reverse engineering” followed by reasons for
using reverse engineering. It also introduced the reverse engineering strategy,
the three phases of the reverse engineering generic process, contact and noncon-
tact scanning, point processing, and application geometric model development.
Chapter 2 builds on Chapter 1 by providing an in-depth depiction of method-
ologies and techniques for reverse engineering.
Chapter 3 presents information on reverse engineering hardware and soft-
ware and also provides excellent information on commercially available reverse
engineering hardware and software.
 1.7 Phase 3–Application Geometric Model Development 9

Chapter 4 provides a structured approach for selecting the appropriate re-

verse engineering system for a specific business need.
Chapter 5 introduces the fundamentals of rapid prototyping with an in-depth
description of various commercially available rapid prototyping technologies.
Chapter 6 provides excellent information on the relationship between reverse
engineering and rapid prototyping.
Chapter 7 provides cases studies of successful applications of reverse engin-
eering in the automotive industry.
Chapter 8 provides cases studies of successful applications of reverse engin-
eering in the aerospace industry.
Chapter 9 provides cases studies of successful applications of reverse engin-
eering in the medical equipment industry.
Chapter 10 describes the legal aspects and implications of reverse engineering.
Chapter 11 discusses the barriers to adopting reverse engineering.

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