Novel package dedicated to reverse engineering

An ICEM product story

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Aug 31, 2004

RevEng is a new stand-alone software product for reverse engineering applications.

ICEM has developed a new stand-alone software product for reverse engineering applications.

ICEM RevEng enables users to efficiently handle 3D digitised data imported as individual points from tactile measuring devices, as point clouds or facet data from laser scanners, or from photogrammetry systems.

In addition to standard ASCII-based and STL formats, proprietary formats from individual scanner manufacturers are also supported.

Once imported, scan data can be displayed as rendered images and then converted to a surface model for further development and refinement.

This provides the quickest way of having digital representations of real-world objects available on the computer for further processing.

Scan data and surface data can also be used simultaneously, together with ICEM's real-time rendering technology, to create photorealistic visualisations for early design review and packaging needs.

Scan creation and modification tools enable data missing from the original scan to be added and for scan data to be filtered, edited and merged before surfacing, while additional surface creation tools enable features such as flanges, fillets, profiles and surfaces of revolution to be added to the derived surface model.

In addition, ICEM RevEng provides facilities for interrogating the created surfaces in order to identify any deviation from the original scan data.

A coloured contour plot shows the difference, in millimetres, between nominal and actual values.

Out of position and partly scanned data can also rapidly be positioned using a "register" function.

Using ICEM RevEng's inbuilt quick surfacing facilities, surfaces can also be automatically generated through a user-defined patch structure.

Surface models created this way can be used in other, parallel processes such as computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis, tooling design and packaging investigation, where software that cannot support facet (scan) data or that doesn't need Class A quality surface data is used.

To enable scan data and the derived surface model to be developed in context with related objects, ICEM RevEng enables CAD data from other systems to be imported and displayed as a background reference.

In addition to enabling new surface data to be aligned with existing CAD data, this facility also keeps the amount of "live" data to a minimum in order to improve performance.

The final surface model data generated with ICEM RevEng can be exported to other vendors' engineering CAD systems via an industry-standard IGES or VDA interface, one of which, at the customer's choice, is included as standard.

Alternatively, data can be exported via additional-cost, direct interfaces to IBM/Dassault Systemes' Catia V4 and Catia V5, UGS' I-deas, Unigraphics and NX, or PTC's CADDS and Pro/E.

"In addition to our traditional customers in the automotive industry, we believe that ICEM RevEng will appeal to users who don't need to create Class A surface models but who simply need a cost-effective way of creating digital surface models of existing, physical objects, either for further development or for archive purposes", said Lee Cureton, Chief Executive, ICEM.

"There is a strong demand for this technology in the countries of the Asia Pacific region and the former Soviet Union, as well as in Western countries, so we are confident of success with this new ICEM product", he added.

ICEM RevEng is priced at Eur 16,000 (US $18,400) and will be available for customer shipments in the Autumn of this year.