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Problem:   Completely reverse-engineer an existing rough casting for the purpose of competitive product benchmarking. An automotive supplier wanted to compare their products to another suppliers products through performing FEA analysis on the created CAD data.

Process:   The process used to fulfill this customer’s needs incorporated the use of both laser digitizing and CMM measurement technology. In order to obtain all of the 3-Dimensional information, the model was digitized from a number of different orientations which were all later associated together into the same coordinate system. Critical features (mounting surfaces, hole locations and sizes, etc.) were measured using the CMM.

Solution:   The digitized data was used as reference to construct a fully detailed, accurate, solid model which was then exported as a STEP solid model. The STEP format can be imported into most mainstream CAD packages.