Reverse Engineering an AR-10 Rifle from Scan Data

As an engineer at NeoMetrix Technologies, Ken Hart helps clients improve their current reverse engineering workflow through the use of 3D scanning technology. 3D scanners are efficient at capturing surface measurements of complex parts. The output scan data serves as a guide for creating CAD models.

Hart used Xtract3D for the first time to reverse engineer a rifle from scan to CAD. He found the reverse engineering add-in is easy to pick and learn as you go.

“Reverse engineering with XTract3D mimics how you would normally design a CAD from a blank screen in SOLIDWORKS so there’s no new workflow to learn which is a time saver”, says Hart. “What’s really great about XTract3D is that it doesn’t feel like an add-in for SOLIDWORKS at all. Its reverse engineering tools works harmoniously with native SOLIDWORKS tools so the experience is seamless. XTract3D allows me to work with large meshes without any lagging or freezing issues.”

Parametric modeling of a rifle created by Hart using XTract3D inside SOLIDWORKS:

“One of the benefits to reverse engineering directly inside SOLIDWORKS is that a CAD model created will have feature tree. This makes it easier to understand design intent of the part when collaborating as a team and it’s easy to make modifications down the road.”

There are companies that simply don’t have the budget to purchase standalone reverse engineering software packages. Hart believes that XTract3D is a great addition for engineers and designers who already use SOLIDWORKS as their CAD modeling package and is looking for an affordable reverse engineering solution.

“XTract3D is a great alternative for converting 3D mesh data to CAD because does it at a fraction of the price of other reverse engineering solutions. The price provides accessibility to those who normally wouldn’t be able to reverse engineer using scan data in the past”, says Hart.