From scan to CAD to part

We match the scanner to the part and sweep it by hand. Each pass adds thousands of measured points where the light lands. A single pass rarely sees a whole part, so most jobs take several passes from different angles to catch undercuts and hidden faces. Shiny, dark or clear surfaces are harder for any optical scanner, so we plan for them before the scan, not after.

Tool

Artec Spider for small, detailed parts (down to 0.05 mm); Eva for medium parts; Leo when the part cannot come to us. How each scanner sees.

Output

Raw passes: clouds of points with color, not yet one object

Watch for

Line of sight, reflective or see-through surfaces, deep pockets the light cannot reach

The passes land in slightly different positions. The software finds the same surfaces in each pass and slides them together, which is called registration. Then we strip out noise and stray points, the odd reflection or the edge of the table, so what is left is one clean dataset of the part and nothing else.

Tool

Artec Studio

Output

One aligned point cloud

Watch for

Doubled surfaces from a bad alignment; gaps where no pass could see

The cloud becomes a surface made of millions of small triangles: a mesh. Small holes left by reflective or hard-to-reach spots are filled, and the mesh is optimized so it is clean and manageable instead of an oversized, noisy point cloud. This is the STL or OBJ file. It is exactly right for 3D printing, viewing and archiving. What it is not: editable. There is no "hole" or "wall" in it to change, only triangles.

Output

Watertight mesh: STL, or OBJ with the color texture when it was captured

Good for

3D printing a replica, visualization, jigs and fixtures, a digital record you keep on file

Not for

Changing a dimension, machining from features, engineering drawings

To get from a mesh to CAD, we fit real geometry to the triangles: a plane to each flat face, a cylinder to each bolt hole, a radius to the inner corner. This is surface reconstruction. It takes an eye for how the part was actually designed, not a "trace the mesh" pass. A traced spline looks right and machines wrong; a fitted cylinder is a hole you can tap.

Tool

Design X and Control X, Fusion 360, SolidWorks

Judgment

Was that a true cylinder, or a worn one? Is this face meant to be flat? We decide from how the part is used.

Why it matters

This is the step that separates a usable reverse-engineered part from an unusable one. Reverse engineering.

The fitted surfaces become a solid model built from real, editable features: a sketch with dimensions, an extrusion, two holes, a fillet. This is the STEP or IGES file. It opens in SolidWorks, Fusion 360 and similar programs, so your team can keep working on it. Watch the hole size change: one number edited, both holes and the whole model follow. A mesh cannot do that.

Output

STEP or IGES solid; drawings and new versions can follow from it

Good for

Machining, editing the design, fixing a weak point, changing a fitment, making the part better than the original

Costs

Modeling time on top of the scan, so ask for it when you will edit or machine, not just print

Before anything ships, we check the finished model back against the original scan data. Every spot where the two disagree shows up as color: green where they match, orange where the model drifted. On real jobs the agreement is often within a few hundredths of a millimeter. Where it is not, we fix the model and compare again. This is what separates professional reverse engineering from "scan it and hope it fits".

Output

Color-mapped deviation report, scan vs model, or scan vs a reference part

Also used for

Inspection of a finished part against its design; product and copying disputes

Then

You get the mesh, the STEP and the report. Which file do you need?