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Reverse Engineering Workbench

In one sentence: The Reverse Engineering workbench converts scanned data — point clouds and meshes — into editable CAD geometry by fitting analytic primitives (planes, cylinders, spheres), B-spline surfaces and curves, segmenting meshes by surface type, and reconstructing closed surfaces via Poisson reconstruction.

What is the Reverse Engineering workbench for?

Reverse engineering in FreeCAD means taking data from the physical world (a 3-D scan, an imported mesh, or a point cloud) and turning it back into precise CAD geometry. The Reverse Engineering workbench provides:

  • Surface reconstruction — build a watertight mesh from an unordered point cloud with normals (Poisson) or triangulate an ordered depth-camera scan directly.
  • Mesh segmentation — split a complex mesh into regions corresponding to recognisable surface types (plane, cylinder, sphere, B-spline patch) so each region can be fitted independently.
  • Primitive fitting (approximation) — fit a Part::Plane, Part::Cylinder, Part::Sphere, Bézier surface, or B-spline surface to a mesh segment or point cloud.
  • Boundary extraction — extract the boundary loops of a mesh as Part wires or faces, which can then be used as profiles for Part Design features.

Typical reverse-engineering workflow

3-D scan
   │
   ▼
Import scan (Points workbench)       Import mesh (Mesh workbench)
   │                                       │
   ▼                                       ▼
Poisson Reconstruction          Mesh Segmentation / Manual Segmentation
   │                                       │
   ▼                                       ▼
mesh                             mesh segments (per surface type)
   │                                       │
   └──────────────────┬───────────────────┘
                      ▼
            Approximation tools
            (Plane / Cylinder / Sphere /
             B-Spline Surface / B-Spline Curve)
                      │
                      ▼
               Part geometry (solid, face, edge)
                      │
                      ▼
            Part Design / Sketcher for further refinement

The workbench adds a Reverse Engineering menu with three submenus:

Submenu Tools
Surface Reconstruction Poisson…, Structured Point Clouds
Segmentation Mesh Segmentation…, Manual Segmentation…, From Components, Wire From Mesh Boundary…; also Remesh with Gmsh, Vertex Curvature, Curvature Info (from Mesh workbench)
Approximation Plane, Cylinder, Sphere, Polynomial Surface, Approximate B-Spline Surface…, Approximate B-Spline Curve…

Input data requirements

Tool group Accepted input
Surface Reconstruction Point cloud (Points::Feature with normals)
Structured Point Clouds Structured point cloud (Points::Structured)
Segmentation Mesh (Mesh::Feature)
Wire From Mesh Boundary Mesh (Mesh::Feature)
Approximation — Plane Any geometry
Approximation — Cylinder / Sphere / Polynomial Mesh (Mesh::Feature)
Approximation — B-Spline Surface Point cloud or Mesh
Approximation — B-Spline Curve Point cloud

See also

  • Poisson Reconstruction — watertight mesh from point cloud
  • Mesh Segmentation — auto-split mesh by surface type
  • Approximate B-Spline Surface — fit free-form NURBS
  • All Tools — complete tool reference
  • Points workbench — import and manage point clouds
  • Mesh workbench — mesh repair before reverse engineering
  • Surface workbench — free-form surface tools for the resulting geometry