A knowledge-based reverse engineering process for CAD models management

The paper presents a knowledge-based reverse engineering approach to identify several parametric CAD models from point clouds and manage the relationships between the CAD models. This knowledge intensive process enables designer interaction to capture design intents and to integrate digital data from previous product in a new product lifecycle. The obtained parametric CAD models are easy to change and to make evolve to design a new product using physical product data in a PLM approach. The paper presents the proposed knowledge-based reverse engineering process that implies to manage several CAD models generated from the same reverse engineering process. The data model used to link parametric features to point clouds, and to associate features to generate several CAD models that can be managed in a PDM system is presented. These CAD models can represent at least the physical product and the new one to be designed. It can also represent several views or product alternatives in the new design process.