The recovery of design intent in reverse engineering problems

doi:10.1016/j.cie.2008.07.023

Computers & Industrial Engineering

Volume 56, Issue 4, May 2009, Pages 1265-1275

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cie.2008.07.023 Get rights and content

Abstract

This article presents a method of reverse engineering applied to the particular case of a cam in order to recover the form and dimensions of the design of the original piece, which take into account: design intent, general knowledge of the problem, different geometric and dimensional restrictions, and the digitized point cloud. Rather than by employing complex mathematical algorithms, a fit is achieved by drawing a parametric outline that complies with the design intent, and by adjusting the different parameters through successive approximations using commercial CAD software commands.

Introduction

There are many areas within reverse engineering, two of which, according to Chikofsky (Chikofsky & Cross, 1990), are:

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“Redocumentation”. The prefix “re-” implies the intention to recover documentation that existed or should have existed.
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“Design recovery”. This part of reverse engineering complements observation of the system with general knowledge of the problem, personal experience, external information, deduction and reasoning, with a view to the recovery of the design intent.

One of the conclusions arrived at by Huang and Tai (2000) is that an ideal reverse engineering system should not only be able to reconstruct a complete geometric model of a piece, but should also be able to capture the initial design intent. To do so, it is necessary to perform preprocessing of the scanned point cloud that consists of filtered points, curvature analysis and segmentation of the point cloud, for subsequent least-squares fitting.

This article is closely associated with the capture of the design intent and the recovery of documentation by means of reverse engineering. We therefore propose a reverse engineering process that involves scanned and filtered points, the separation of the point cloud into different features, and the determination of the parameters (dimensional and geometric restrictions) that best fit the design intent, and finally, the creation of the surfaces. Parametric CAD software is used to apply successive parametric approximations of the cross-section, instead of a mathematical algorithm that is fitted to each surface.

Various reverse engineering software packages exist that are able to project segmented point clouds in one direction onto a plane, thereby fitting the projected points to a profile, such as REFAB (Reverse Engineering FeAture Based) as proposed by Thompson and et al. (1999). This software is limited to five types of manufacturing operations, one of which is the extrusion of profiles. The profile is formed of Bezier curves that are adjusted, with tiny errors, to the 2D projected point cloud, but the process does not take account of the general knowledge of the problem, the initial design intent, the conditions or geometric and dimensional restrictions of the mechanism or its operation.

Section snippets

Reverse engineering

Sarkar and Menq (1991) defines the steps to follow in a reverse engineering process. The process begins with a scan of the surface points and the detection of the limits of each region or type of surface. These limits allow the point cloud to be divided into different regions. Subsequently, in each region, the x,y,z coordinates of the points are transformed into u,v, parametric values, the nodes are selected, and an iterative least-squares B-spline surface approximation is applied to the point

Digitization of the surface

The digitization process can be very rapid or very lengthy and tedious depending on the tools available. Várady and et al. (1997) classifies data acquisition methods into two sorts: (a) tactile methods (robotic arms, CMMs) and (b) contactless methods (optical, acoustic or magnetic). There are five categories of optical methods that are the quickest and the most frequently used: triangulation, ranking, interferometry, structured lighting and image analysis.

The Human Paleontology Research Group

A practical application of reverse engineering that complies with the design intent

As an example to illustrate its application, we performed the reverse engineering of the cam head shown in Fig. 3. The piece itself was available, but there were no technical specifications, for which reason it was necessary to know how it functioned within its mechanism, in order to define the shape and subsequently to adjust its dimensions.

We began with the following data that comply with the initial design intent of the cam:

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The cam is made up of an indefinite number of tangent arcs (Fig. 3c).

Repeatability of the process

In order to test the stability of the process the scan of the cam was repeated five times, which gave the maximum error results (maximum orthogonal distance of the surface fitted to the point cloud), and error distribution shown in Fig. 31, Fig. 32, Fig. 33, Fig. 34, Fig. 35.

If we compare the dispersion results of the surface fitted to the point cloud of the sample, in which we obtained the following parameters (D-int = 18.94 mm, D-ext = 73.55 mm, R1 = 5.55 mm, R2 = 28.6 mm, R3 = 16.86 mm, R4 = 14.09 mm and ANG =

Conclusions

Reverse engineering is an important tool with which to generate CAD models. There are many mathematical algorithms that allow the point cloud to be adjusted to different types of curves or surfaces, some of which are programmed into various CAD commercial software packages. However, if one wishes to transmit the initial design intent through reverse engineering, mathematical algorithms must be created that contain very different geometric and dimensional conditions for each case, requiring an

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to acknowledge the trust and support lent by Professor Dr. D. José Miguel Carretero Díaz, director of the Area of Palaeontology of the University of Burgos, when using the digitization equipment belonging to his research group.

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The recovery of design intent in reverse engineering problems

Abstract

Introduction

Section snippets

Reverse engineering

Digitization of the surface

A practical application of reverse engineering that complies with the design intent

Repeatability of the process

Conclusions

Acknowledgements

Computer-Aided Design

Computer-Aided Design

Computer-Aided Design

Computer-Aided Design

Computer Aided Geometric Design

Computer in Industry

Computer-Aided Design

Computer-Aided Design

International Journal of Machine Tools & Manufacture