Abstract
Industrial products with free-form surfaces become more popular recently as people pursue not only the functions of a product, but also its design quality and elaboration which are essential for an enjoyable experience of using the product. An effective method to design this type of product is reverse engineering assisted with the tools used in computer aided design/manufacturing/testing (CAD/CAM/CAT). In our research, a 3 D scanner was used to measure a model car body in three subjects. The measured data in the stl (stereolithography) format represented as an aggregate of small triangles cannot be used for computer aided numerical control (CNC) fine machining. To solve this problem, they were converted into a CAD model by using 3 D-CAD software CATIA V5. This paper presents the issues such as the efficiency in modeling the surface and the smoothness and accuracy of CAD model created through reverse engineering.
