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Reverse Engineering for Surface Modelling

Kristian Wain

New member
Hello,

I work on catia daily and recently undertook a course in surface modelling, tbh this merely told me the tools all the rest of my knowledge was due to my own tinkering with the program.

i am currently tasked with the job of reverse engineering some tooling for my company however i am encountering some problems.

thus far i have been capturing the data using power inspect and a faro arm and importing this data into catia, from this i have been generating planes to straighten up the points and then generating curves along these points to fill in my surfaces.

the tool is very curved and hard to capture using a point probe, but im trying.

i only have access to the basics of catia such as generative shape and free form for surface modelling.

does anyone have suggestions how to better do this?

i tried this method before and managed to generate surfaces to within 0.01mm of the original (which considering the 0.4m tolerance of the inspection arm) im quite pleased with.

my only concern is this time i am generating large errors and unsure if this method of surfacing is best. i have tried sweeping the surfaces through the curves but get the same surface as doing a fill, so this isn't affecting me i think its either something im doing wrong in terms of capturing the data or something to do with the projection and curves being generated in catia.

im more looking for experienced input into if this method sounds viable or if others have done similar and found different methods to work better.

knowledge is power and im an apprentice in need of this knowledge.

i do have access to catia and solid works at a different location and have read some information regarding point cloud data and meshing surfaces, would this work better? if so can anyone provide links or information on how to do this, never used it and i don't fancy wasting the day teaching myself.

many thanks

kris
 
Kris, I suggest contacting your PowerInspect/Faro Arm supplier and ask for their recommendations on importing the digitized data into CATIA. They might have apps that automate the steps and provide better quality surface data. It would probably be a good investment for your company to spend a few bucks to have the supplier spend a day or two teaching you how to best reverse engineer the shapes and parts the tooling.
 

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