Reverse Engineering: Practical Considerations for Rapid Prototyping

It is now possible to generate threedimensional (3D) solid models of extremely complicated systems from which full plastic replicas can be generated using a variety of rapid prototyping technologies. The cycle time has been reduced to several hours, where it previously took months to produce a comparable prototype. The process of taking a design into the 3D environment, whether UNIX-or PC-based, is getting easier and fairly straightforward.The design engineer interested in producing a 3D model from unique data sets such as computer tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance (MR) image data is particularly concerned with time, cost, accuracy, and conversion problems. This paper presents an approach that Lone Peak Engineering, Inc. (LPE) has used that allows them to successfully handle CT and MR data for reverse engineering (RE).