18

Reverse Engineering and Its Application in

Rapid Prototyping and Computer
Integrated Manufacturing
S. G. Zhang MSc & A. Ajmal BSc MSc PhD CEng MBCS MilE
School of Engineering, Systems & Design, South Bank University
103 Borough Road, London SE1 OAA, UK Tel: 071-8157632,
Fax: 071-8157699, zhangsa@vax.sbu.ac.uk, ajmala@vax.sbu.ac.uk

S.Z. Yang ACAS

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Huazhong University of
Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei, P.R.China

Abstract
Reverse engineering is playing an important role in generating and modifying CAD model,
especially for the creation of 3D CAD model of sculptured surface. This paper made a survey
of reverse engineering and its applications in rapid prototyping and computer integrated
manufacturing. It divided reverse engineering into three main parts: data acquisition, surface
reconstruction and data transfer. The recent research results, their merits and restrictions
about surface digitizing, reconstruction of surface and data transfer technology are studied. A
primary conclusion about reverse engineering and its applications in rapid prototyping and
computer integrated manufacturing is drawn up.

Keywords
reverse engineering, rapid prototyping, computer integrated manufacturing, data acquisition,
surface digitizing, surface reconstruction, data transfer

I INTRODUCTION

The basic concept of producing a part based on an original or physical model without the use
of engineering drawing is called "Reverse Engineering" (Abella, 1994). Reverse engineering
has changed from a skilled manual process to an engineering tool using sophisticated
computer software and modem measuring instrument. It has rapidly expended its origin
functions in maintenance into the areas of design and production. Now it is defined as "the
creation of a CAD model from an existing part or a prototype"(Motavalli, 1994). Now the
reverse engineering is playing a the role of constructing and modifying CAD model in rapid

Q. Sun et al. (eds.), Computer Applications in Production Engineering

© IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 1995
172 Part Four Reverse Engineering

prototyping (Hosni 1993). In addition it is also an important tool in Computer Integrated

Manufacturing (CIM) for rapid part modelling.
In the rapid prototyping environment, 3D CAD model can be utilised to drive sintering,
layering, depositing or sculpturing equipment to create a usable prototype within hours much
as the ways a computer printer uses a word processor file to fashion a printed page. As the
input data of rapid prototyping the CAD files should be constructed with faster speed and
higher accuracy than that it does in other applications. The rapid prototyping process is by
definition capable of building volume, hence 3D CAD modelling or surface modelling is
required. Alternatively, the CAD modelling (for example 2D wire frame modelling) must be
transferred into 3D CAD and then this will not benefit from the advantage of time saving of
rapid prototyping. Therefore, two demands must be met by CAD system: (1) 3D solid
modelling or surface modelling, (2) Create CAD model with faster speed and higher accuracy.
Fortunately reverse engineering is exactly a faster surface modelling technique if a
manufactured part exists. It greatly simplifies the process of creating a CAD model and meets
the demands mentioned above.
In CIM environment, it generally starts from a CAD model. Then CAD files are
interpreted as NC machining codes according to which the part is finally manufactured. In
addition, the robot movement programs and coordinate measuring machine automatic
inspection program can be developed with the CAD model. However, in many cases, the
CAD model of a part is not always available to begin the CIM system. Especially when no
existing CAD file is usable and a manufactured part has already existed, conversion part data
to CAD system is necessary. Reverse engineering involves three main phases: data
acquisition, surface reconstruction, and data transfer.
Recent developments in rapid prototyping and CIM have increased part complexity. It is
necessary to provide a fast tool for complex part or free-form surface modelling. Therefore
reverse engineering has been becoming an important tool and has been utilising extensively in
manufacturing context in rapid prototyping and CIM. For example, in rapid prototyping
environment, creating model is used for evaluating form, fit, ergonomic study and function
test. Generally it is modified such that satisfying some design or functional demands. After
modifying it is necessary to digitize the model and to update the CAD database. In
automobile industry, the development of new car model takes shorter time from concept to
model with reverse engineering than before that development model with CAD surface
geometric modelling or tedious manual digitization process. In the die and mould industry, the
existing design is often modified on the shop floor due to manufacturing limitations. The
product geometric change with such modifications that are usually not reflected in the CAD
model. If the dies or moulds are failure for some reason then the experimental results are lost
and the test works must be executed again. With the help of reverse engineering the parts,
moulds or dies which have been modified can be digitized and the CAD database can be
updated. In repair service, when a tooling, die or mould is failed partially because of incorrect
operating or collision it can be repaired faster and more efficient with reverse engineering than
with other methods.

2 DATA ACQUISITION

Digitizer include two categories: non-contact scanner and touch probe. Non-contact scanners
use laser, optics and CCD camera, etc. They can produce huge amounts of point data in a
 Reverse engineering and its applications 173

very short time and without physically touching with the object, therefore, no destructive to
instrument and part. In addition, they also can digitize an unknown surface automatically.
Non-contact 3D surface digitizing technology has been widely researched in rent years for
available commercial object. Laser range-finding probe (Che 1992), HYSCAN 3D laser
digitizer (Steger 1994), 4D-laser scanner (Ioannides 1994), multi-laser displacement sensors
(Smith 1993), laser triangulation probes (Stevenson 1993), vision-based coordinate
measurement system (Elhakim 1993), machine vision system (Huang 1994), CCD camera
(Bao 1994), etc. are researched.
Non-contact scanner even though there exist obvious advantage over the touch probe in
some respects such as high speed and no destructive, there exist some serious drawbacks: for
example, due to different work principles the calibration is very difficult, accuracy is low and
even lower when wider measurement range is demanded. Until today it is difficult to obtain a
commercial usable digitizer within 10 microns. Therefore, it generally is not associated with
precision manufacturing applications. In addition non-contact digitizer often has difficulty of
reaching concavities and undercuts that extends beyond the probing angle. It is also sensitive
to shiny and dark surface. If the surface is shiny reflection it can cause a shift in the location
of the point. If the surface is dark the sensor cannot adequately see the surface. An other
disadvantage is that most CAD/CAM system is difficult to process enormous amount of point
data up to millions. Therefore a data thinning procedure must be carried out before
transferring them into CAD/CAM system.
The touch probe can be used in coordinate measuring machines (CMM) to digitize 3D part
surface. As contrast with non-contact scanner it has high accuracy but low speed. It usually
has high accuracy within microns even sub-micron range. In addition even though part is
more complicated a well-developed probe series can be conveniently elected for the different
parts and the measurement objects. Manual measurement is tedious and an experienced
inspection operator is needed. For complex part inspection accuracy even depends heavily on
the experiments of inspection operator. In automatic measurement a detail path measuring
planning must be designed in advance such that any collision can not occur during measuring.
Therefore, developing a collision-free automatic measurement path planner is necessary. Of
late years more studies are concentrated in resolving the questions. Automated dimensional
inspection intelligent planning environment (Menq 1992 Yau 1992), automatic inspection
planning fragment (Merat 1992), softgauge (Smolky 1992), interactive and integrated
inspection system (Pahk 1993), Object-Oriented inspection planner (Chan 1993), integrated
CMM within design and manufacturing environment (Medland 1993), optimal CMM position
controller (Katebi 1993), etc. are studied. Even though so much more researches are carried
out in CMM as mentioned above, it is difficult to meet the all demands of reverse engineering
when no existing CAD files can be used to direct automatic inspection planning.
For unknown parts, automatic digitizing unknown free-form curve by CMM (Chen 1992),
manually generating initial model then refining the surface model (Hsieh 1993), manually
"outline" the part geometry shape of surface, then, high dense measurement (Yau 1993),
manual coordinate measuring machine (Abella 1994), etc. methods are researched.
The touch probe has high accuracy that satisfied the digitizing demands of precision
manufacturing part but low measurement speed and complicated programming efforts limit its
extended applications. Especially under unknown sculptured surface automatic digitizing
becomes complexity and difficulty. The questions of speed and automation remain unsolved.
174 Part Four Reverse Engineering

3 REPRESENTATION OF SURFACE

Computer representations of 3D object shape fall into two categories: volume representations
and boundary representations. Volume representation can be obtained by Boolean operations
such as union, intersection, difference from its solid primitive, like cylinders, cubes, spheres
and parallelepipeds, etc. In rapid prototyping, manufacturing process is to be defined by
capability of building volume. Therefore, if volume representation is elected and the model is
built on primitive solids, the model itself is a true volume. This makes it easier to create the
facets and post process is generally not necessary. However, volume representation is not
effective in constructing sculptured surface. Boundary representation defines a solid by its
bounding surface. Describing curved surfaces requires a large number of polygons, hence
parametric surface, such as splines, are often employed. In reverse engineering we will be
concerned only with surface representation since measurements are taken at discrete points on
the object surface. For reconstruction, quadric can be used to represent the shapes of a wide
scope using only few parameters (Bradley 1993). Investigation shown the part surface of 85
per cent of manufactured part can be well approximated by sub-set of quadric or superquadric
surface (Hakala 1981). For representation of sculptured surface representation, Bezier
surface, B-spline surface and Non Uniform Rational B-Splines (NURBS) often are applied
because oftheir intuitive and local control properties than other parametric surfaces.
The B-spline surface patch has capabilities which in the other systems would require the
use of either a composite surface or of a single patch based on polynomials of degree higher
than cubic. This advantage is reinforced by the local modification property and the automatic
second-order continuity of the B-spline surface. NURBS is a more general case ofnonrational
B-spline surface. The advantages to use the rational forms are that it is possible to modify a
surface by a given set of defining data by adjust the weights and it is also possible to adjust
the weights so that the geometry of the surface is unaffected but its parameter is changed.
NURBS is a superset of many other types of parametric surfaces such as Bezier, B-spline (Joe
1994), and it also can approximate the COONS surface (Lin 1994). NURBS has become
standard tools for the representation and design of geometry in CAD/CAM and geometry
community. It has great local control capability and is intuitive to designer modification. It
can represent a complex geometry in just one single surface as opposed to many surface
patches (Boulanger 1994). This helps reduce the problems of maintaining surface position and
tangent continuity. In order to further modify the surfaces for creating a complex model,
NURBS has better local control properties than other parametric surfaces.

4 RECONSTRUCTION OF SURFACE

Reconstruction of surface is to fit the selected surface to point data to be measured. An

enormous amount of literature about surface fitting can be found (Bolle 1991, Rogers 1989).
The choice of surface-fitting technique depends on data source, surface representation and
applications. For non-contact scanner, large amounts of point data are collected in order to
ensure that the accuracy and resolution of fitting surface are acceptable. A large amount of
point data up to millions is very difficult to fit. It must be eliminated to a limited quantity.
Keeping in mind, for each of representations a minimum number of point data is desired to
uniquely define a surface of nonundulation. When non-contact scanner is used, smoothing of
 Reverse engineering and its applications 175

point data must be used in order to eliminate the unwanted point data and to filter the point
data fluctuations (Motavalli 1994). For composite surface, the object surface is divided into
several regions (Sarkar 1991 ). Each of these regions is devoid of sharp change in shape and
consists of a single feature. Surface-fitting is implemented only on the given region.
Therefore, the effect of boundary detection error on accuracy is very large. Especially when
the boundary has not discontinuity, it is much difficult to detect. Generally it is recomputed
with the intersection of individual surfaces after surface-fitting is carried out. When a single
surface is fitted into the point data, this reduces the problems of the surface position and
tangent continuity. The amounts of point data are very large and the calculation is very
complicated since matrix order is high when fitting with least square method. In addition
interpolation method can be used, but surface undulation is unavoidable.
For different applications surface fitting methods could be different (Bolle 1993). In the
most of cases least square method is suitable. In addition non-linear least square, maximum-
likelihood estimates and variable principle can be used. The surface representations can be
classified into explicit and implicit functions. For explicit function, variable principle can be
used. The results are invariance to rigid transformation, robust fit and no effect of occlusion
on the fit. For implicit function, least square, maximum likelihood estimate can be used. Least
square method is invariance to rigid transformation, but estimates are not robust and very
sensitive to occlusion. Maximum likelihood estimates are asymptotically unbiased, but
estimates are not unique, not robust and not invariance to rigid transformation. The detail
fitting formulations of quadric surface, B-spline surface and NURBS surface can found in
related references (Chivate 1994, Rogers 1989, Laurent -Gengoux 1993).

5 DATA TRANSFER

Reverse engineering results can be transferred into CAD system by different file formats like
IGES, STEP (PDES), VDA-FS, DXF, etc. IGES is the most convenient one of data
exchange formats for reverse engineering. It is a neutral file format. IGES only defines each
entity to an entity class and a sequence number. Since the entity types vary quite a lot from
one CAD system to another, it used to be problems with file transfer. Especially drafting
entities like arrow heads and diameter symbols could easily disappear. VDA-FS resolve this
problem differently. In VDA-FS file format, all curves (including lines) are converted to B-
spline curves and all surfaces are converted to B-spline surfaces. This makes it simple to use.
A further development will lead to the STEP (PDES) standard, which is assumed to become
the ISO standard for graphical file transfer (Eastman 1994). DXF file format is used by
AutoCAD. For special applications, G-eode can be directly produced by reverse engineering.
It is also possible to produce directly STL file or SLI file. Then the interactive format
software between CAD and SL is not necessary and drawbacks of STL format disappear.

6 CONCLUSION
As an efficient tool of generating and modifYing CAD model, reverse engineering is playing an
important role in rapid prototyping and CIM. Reverse engineering include three mainly
phases: data acquisition, reconstruction of surface and data transfer.
For data acquisition, non-contact scanners and touch probes can be used. Non-contact
176 Part Four Reverse Engineering

scanner uses laser, optics and CCD camera. It has high speed and no destructive to part and
instrument. It is especially suitable to digitize the unknown sculptured surface. However low
accuracy limited its applications in precision manufacturing part. It is also sensitive to shiny
and dark surface and often has difficulty to reaching concavities and undercuts that extends
beyond the probing angle. Touch probe has high accuracy that satisfied the digitizing
demands of precision manufacturing part but low measurement speed and complicated
programming efforts limit its extended applications. Especially under unknown sculptured
surface, automatic digitizing becomes complexity and difficulty.
In representation of surface, volume representation and boundary representation can be
used. Volume representation is especially suitable to rapid prototyping and post process is
generally not necessary. However, it is not effective to sculptured surface. Boundary
representation represents a solid by its bounding surface. Thus it is especially suitable to
sculptured surface. For simple part, quadric surface can be used to describe the shapes of a
wide scope using only a few parameters. For sculptured surface Bezier patch, B-spline patch
and NURBS surface can be used because of their intuitive and local control properties.
In reconstruction of surface, local fitting and global fitting can be used. For local fitting
object surface is divided into several regions. Surface-fitting is implemented only on the given
region. In this case, surface-fitting is simple but boundary detection is difficulty. For global
fitting, object surface is fitted into a simple surface. This reduces the problems of maintaining
surface position and tangent continuity but the amounts of point data are very large and the
calculation is complicated. With respect to fitting, variable principle, least square method and
maximum likelihood estimate can be used. Variable principle is invariance to rigid
transformation, robust fit and no effect of occlusion on the fit. Least square method is
invariance to rigid transformation, but fitting is not robust and it is very sensitive to occlusion.
Maximum likelihood estimates are asymptotically unbiased but estimates are not unique, not
robust and not invariance to rigid transformation.
In data transfer, IGES neutral file format is used extensively in data exchange between
CAD systems. However it is also problems with file transfer. In addition STEP (PDES),
VDA-FS, DFX file format can be used.

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8 BIOGRAPHY

Suogui Zhang is an associate professor of mechatronics engineering in Taiyuan University of

Technology, P.R. China. He received a MSc in Machinery Dynamics from Taiyuan University
of Technology and now a doctoral candidate working in Integrated Manufacturing System in
South Bank University, U.K. Current research interests include CNC, CMM, CAD/CAM,
CIM, reverse engineering.
Dr. A. Ajmal obtained his PhD from University of Manchester (UMIST) in Computer-
Aided Manufacturing and a MSc in Advanced Manufacturing Systems from UMIST. After
completing his BSc (Hons) in Mechanical Engineering, he joined the Consulting Engineering
Company. He worked in the University of Manchester & the University of Edinburgh as a
lecturer and supervising research projects on GKS & CAM. Currently working as a senior
lecturer in Computer-Integrated Manufacturing at the South Bank University. His research
interest includes, development of integrated manufacturing systems, manufacturing planning
and expert systems.
Shuzi Yang is a professor of mechanical engineering, president in Huazhong University of
Science and Technology, academician of the China Academy of Sciences. Current research
interests include automatic control system, mechanical default diagnostic, artificial intelligent,
intelligence manufacturing system.