Expanding Fusion 360's Reverse Engineering Limitation

[Anonymous]

 Hi there,

First of all, kudos to Fusion 360 for venturing into the world of reverse engineering. As someone who is quite proficient in reverse engineering using Geomagic Design X, I have a few suggestions that perhaps Fusion 360 could adopt to be competitive in this aspect. This came after I watched the recently uploaded live recording of mesh to solid video where Aaron demonstrated the process involved.

1) In my humble opinion, I believe individual meshes should be selectable (the lines, vertices and faces of a mesh).
2) We do not like 'eyeballing' the dimension to create a solid. Knowing that manufactured parts come with imperfections we prefer to round off the figures to get as close to customer's spec as possible - 25.0034 can be extruded as 25 if the customer's spec is only to 2 decimal points. More on these later.

Let me illustrate my point:

In Geomagic Design X, the initial stage would be the same as in Fusion 360: import the mesh. From this point onward, I would suggest Fusion 360 take the approach of selectable mesh datasets. The logic being that, the data that is scanned and imported are usually aligned to the origin of the scanner. We would prefer it aligned to local coordinate system. So, select a few flat surfaces on the mesh using paint brush selection tool, create best-fit plane out of it (flatness is a perceived measurement, a surface that may look flat to our naked eyes may look rough under high accuracy scanner, with microns of deviations contributed by bacterium and imperfections, hence the best-fit plane option is necessary to average out this mesh data). Do either 3-2-1 or X-Y-Z alignment (if a part is symmetric in observation, we might prefer a plane across the middle of the part). And from here on, only do we start doing what Fusion 360 call 'create mesh section'. Again, we might want to create extra planes for mesh sketches by extracting mesh datasets as best-fit planes. This process is repeated over and over again to add, subtract etc. from the solid we would create to output a parametrically sound model. The flat surfaces of the mesh should never be eyeballed like in the video. It is considered bad practice as we never assume what we do not know of, especially when the part may be fitted into an assembly and millimeters of discrepancy (as determined by customer's spec) may spell doom to the final outcome.

Also I would like to point out that the fit curves to mesh section's graphic should be overlayed on top of the cross-section of the mesh as viewed normal to the sketch plane. I'm not sure if this is just my PC because I could only see the blue sketch line when I orbit around the sketch plane using fit curves to mesh section. And I'd hope to see shortcut key to toggle view between models (for example, ctrl + 1 for sketch, ctrl + 2 for mesh, ctrl + 3 for surfaces, ctrl + 4 for solids). And one last thing, to compare overall solid to the scanned data (mesh), we would use an accuracy analyzer tool that shows the deviations between our remodeled solid and the mesh, based on our specified accuracy. If we set +-0.1 as acceptable, then it will show a color mapping of anything between +-0.1 deviation as green on the solid, and anything less than -0.1 as blue, anything more than +0.1 as red.

I know this is Fusion 360, and not Geomagic Design X. I know I may be asking too drastic of a change. But take a look at some of the YouTube videos being put out there from Geomagic, their workflows when it comes to reverse engineering a scanned part. I believe there are much inspiration and improvements to be made on the reverse engineering end. Keep it up Fusion 360. Make it all-inclusive. With such a price point I look forward to a day where I can fully transition to Fusion 360 as a great software for reverse engineering purposes.

Disclaimer: I do not know if anyone has requested these stuff yet. And these opinions are mine and not associated nor endorsed by 3D Systems and my current employee/company.

Cheers,
Sojeha

[SolubleSpork]

Definitely love this idea.  In my career, I use PolyWorks on a daily basis for similar purposes and I have dabbled a little with Geomagic.  Bring in 3d scan data, align data to a coordinate system, reverse engineer/develop model, color map the deviations, iterate, etc.  Geomagic and PolyWorks are definitely different types of software from CAD.  Most companies would take the position that the different software is out of their wheelhouse, but Fusion 360 integrated CAE analysis functionality which was also generally different software.  So if there was ever a company that could integrate more robust reverse engineering capabilities into their already integrated CAD/CAM/CAE/Everything Else/Do-It-All software, Fusion 360 seems like the best bet.  I would love to see this taken up as a challenge for the AutoDesk team.

[Anonymous]

I'm all for this. I use polyworks mainly but also dabble in geomagic. simple yet precise reverse engineering tools are a god send. Geomagic is certainly on the right track with their methods. extracting revolves and planes are some great features and I expect there to be a huge demand for these kinds of tools soon in the prosumer/hobbyist fields thanks to the rise of 3d printers. The free software for photogrammetry is becoming very good enabling almost anyone to generate a point cloud of most objects. the only real barrier to entry is geomagic being the only decent reverse engineering package. 

[mah56]

I give my vote. I bought a 3d scanner a year ago, i do some stuffs for industry that needs 0.1mm accuracy. I tried to find the best price/quality software and geomagic design X is obviously too much for me, for that time. Rhinoceros3d is very powerful (also mesh2surface plugin), but no parametrics. Fusion 360 is nearly perfect for me, but it lacks important but simple reverse engineering stuffs, little things that annoy like some things you said.
I'm actually in hobby version as i'm far from 100k€/year, but if they enhance the reverse engineering part, i'm completely in for a monthly subscribe ! And if we think about it, there is not so much things missing, it can be a matter of a month or two if they focus on the right things.