KBRE: A Knowledge Based Reverse Engineering for Mechanical Components

Abstract : This paper focuses on Reverse Engineering (RE) in mechanical design. RE is an activity which consists in creating a full CAD model from a 3D point cloud. The aim of RE is to enable an activity of redesign in order to improve, repair or update a given mechanical part. Nowadays, CAD models obtained using modern software applications are generally “frozen” because they are sets of triangles of free form surfaces. In such models, there are not functional parameters but only geometric parameters. This paper proposes the KBRE (Knowledge Based Reverse Engineering) methodology which allows managing and fitting manufacturing and/or functional features. Specific geometric algorithms are described. They allow extracting design intents in a point cloud in order to fit these features.