Reverse engineering software

Hexagon’s Manufacturing Intelligence division has unveiled REcreate, a powerful and flexible new software solution designed ‘from the ground up’ to make it easier and faster to reverse engineer parts from metrology scan to manufacturable model.

Reverse engineering processes are routinely employed throughout manufacturing and maintenance processes. However, despite the availability of highly capable metrology systems, these processes can require complex digital workflows to account for incompatible data types and technologies, which impedes productivity and can introduce errors. Furthermore, those workflows require significant experience and access to multiple tools that can create bottlenecks in many organizations. Hexagon has brought its metrology and production experts together to build REcreate ‘from the bottom up’ to streamline these workflows so that engineers and operators can routinely achieve a high quality, manufacturing-ready result.

Designed to remove complexity, REcreate provides a single working environment from scan to manufacturable CAD model.  The user can prepare CAD models and drawings from any point cloud data. Its fully featured CAD tool suite enables users to create complete and manufacturable CAD models as well as 2D engineering drawings. REcreate’s analysis tools also enable manufacturing professionals to interrogate those 3D models and validate whether they are manufacturable before exporting as CAD or STL for computer aided manufacturing (CAM) or additive manufacturing processes.

While designed to be interoperable and slot into a customer’s existing processes, the solution offers additional benefits to customers that use other Hexagon technologies in their workflow. Sites that use Hexagon’s portable arms for inspection can reduce training needs by allowing any operator to read inspection data directly from the device to reverse engineer using a single solution. REcreate is also rigorously tested with Hexagon’s production software tools that are used to plan, optimise, and program machining processes.

Ken Woodbine, REcreate product manager says, “We believe that by making reverse engineering software versatile and easy-to-use, REcreate gives design, production and inspection teams greater confidence in their reverse engineering processes. With the laser scanning technologies available today, there’s no reason why most use cases can’t be addressed by anyone who needs them provided they have access to the data and tools required – be that ensuring a precise fit for replacement components, repairing legacy parts or updating design files with adjusted geometries following prototype creation or production optimizations.”