Reverse Engineering Mesh

[levonmarkossi]

Happy New Year everyone,

Long story short, I have some .obj or .stl files from a 3D scan off a Faro arm I am trying to work with. Part is a pretty large (14x14) cast aluminum case for automotive stuff.  I am pretty new to Fusion and use Solidworks daily at my real job (reverse engineer jet parts), so I am unsure of where to go.. plus at work we do it the old school way with drawing check vs CMM, no fancy scanners lol :(. 

I've looked into many different ways to grab good data off of it this scan while not making it completely painstaking to do. The built in tool to convert mesh to Brep doesn't allow over 50K triangles.. I'm working with about a 1 million from the Faro arm. I'd like to keep as much accuracy as possible as something are not possible to measure at my work's manual CMM. 

Does anyone have a good method or know of a good plugin/tool? Or maybe a file type that would work better with fusion. Any insight is appreciated. He can only send in a mesh file, or raw coordinates (which I don't have software to use). 

Thanks

[wmhazzard]

Under Create, you can use "create mesh section sketch" and then "fit curves to section sketch". That will let you use the mesh to create geometry. 

[jeff_strater]

@wmhazzard is right - the main tool for reverse engineering today in Fusion is Create Mesh Section, and Fit Curve to Mesh Section.  Phil Eichmiller and I gave a class at Autodesk University in 2019 that covers the reverse engineering topic.  Unfortunately, the class itself was not recorded, but the class materials are here:  https://www.autodesk.com/autodesk-university/class/Reverse-Engineering-Imported-Data-Fusion-360-2019 

[levonmarkossi]

Hi Thanks everyone! for anyone who reads this future, this PDF was most helpful: https://www.autodesk.com/autodesk-university/class/Reverse-Engineering-Imported-Data-Fusion-360-2019...

I did have another question, when I pop in my .obj mesh, is there a way to do make my xy plane against faces on the mesh? For instance this aluminum case has a flat side, where i'd like to mate up to the zplane. Then use a feature, bracket location, to mate to the y plane.. ect . Then I know it's fixtured up true in space? I feel like I'm missing something here. 

[etfrench]

1. When you import the mesh, import it into its own component.
2. You can then create a Plane Through Three Points by selecting three points on your flat surface.
3. Create a sketch on the plane.
4. Create a Joint Origin in the sketch.
5. Use that to joint the component along with the mesh to one of the main origin planes.

[levonmarkossi]

So under your step 2, how am I supposed to click on the flat surface if it's still a mesh? *assuming I'm going to construct

[etfrench]

Sorry, the UI changed since I last used this.  You must first disable the timeline (Toggle off "Do not capture Design History").  The Mesh workspace will be available then. 

[TrippyLighting]

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@etfrench wrote:

You must first disable the timeline (Toggle off "Do not capture Design History"). 

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You can edit the mesh fear in the timeline and that will bring up the mesh workspace.

[levonmarkossi]

Gotcha ya makes sense. That was talked about in a livestream I saw while back.. Okay i'll give that a shot tonight thanks again everyone! Lol last night I was using 'Instant Meshes' to save as quad mesh, then bring to Fusion to save a T-Spline to Brep. No luck as I think Fusion doens't like it due to how many quads I had going. 

[TrippyLighting]

The number of quotes is not so important. The settings in InstantMeshes are quite important.

And even a pure quad mesh might have many poles (star points in T-Spline lingo) .

I've converted quad meshes with over 50,000 polygons. But those were "clean" without poles.

[levonmarkossi]

Hi again,

Okay I've gotten to step 4 and 5.. but I'm still not able to figure out what you mean by "joint origin." I've used those before with assembly but not to re-define my x-y-z plane. Does anyone have a video link or PDF I can follow? When searching around for "joint origin" I keep getting information on how to setup assemblies, not this particular scenario

Thanks again!

[levonmarkossi]

Hi again,

Okay I've gotten to step 4 and 5.. but I'm still not able to figure out what you mean by "joint origin." I've used those before with assembly but not to re-define my x-y-z plane. Does anyone have a video link or PDF I can follow? When searching around for "joint origin" I keep getting information on how to setup assemblies, not this particular scenario

Thanks again!

Woops forgot to mention I found a solution via this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMimu388bjA&ab_channel=Into3D

Disclaimer this seems to be older version of Fusion, so some of the steps are different. 

If I can't get into the "sculpt" mode with design history off, anyone know how to have a axis run through center of a shaft on my mesh? I need a plane off of it as I want to use the shelf hole as a datum feature while measuring geometry. 

[etfrench]

In the current UI, just right click on the Mesh to open the context menu.  Select 'Edit'.  Now you can create the three point plane.  The workflow in your linked video will work fine.  I prefer to use joints, but the Align command will do. 

[levonmarkossi]

Hi everyone, so far been smooth until today.. messed up a lot workflow. My mesh model is randomly now black. It's really hard to see anything and driving me nuts. any ideas? I already tried googling around for solutions nothing worked. Again I did nothing out of normal procedures and now all mesh bodies come in like this... making this entire setup useless since I can't see anything well. 

I tried going into my prefences and changing the settings under mesh. Nothing. 

[TheCADWhisperer]

Can you Attach the original *.obj file here?

[levonmarkossi]

I'd rather not as it's sort of proprietary files.. other people are trying to do the same as me currently. 

[levonmarkossi]

I can PM you it? Can you do that on here? 

[levonmarkossi]

Update: fixed. thanks everyone!