From reverse engineering to shape engineering in mechanical design

Reverse engineering and shape reconstruction play an important role in design and manufacturing through the increased use of shape acquisition and processing technologies in the product development process. The application of shape theories to geometric modelling and variability characterization are paving the way to shape engineering and more generic methods for reverse engineering. This paper investigates the fundamentals of shape representation, shape processing and mining at a conceptual, geometric and computational level to address geometric reverse engineering issues in mechanical design. New developed concepts based on discrete curvatures and their applications are presented. Challenges and future researches are also highlighted. (C) 2016 CIRP.