Integrating Multiple Engineering Resources in a Virtual Environment for Reverse Engineering Legacy Mechanical Parts

Reverse engineering is a time-consuming and technically formidable process that is increasingly becoming an economic imperative due to replacement costs. The Multiple Engineering Resources aGent Environment (MERGE) system, introduced in this paper, is a new approach toward reverse engineering whose architecture and modules are driven specifically by the require- ments of legacy engineering. Legacy engineering scenarios pre- sume availability of multiple (possibly incomplete or inconsis- tent) sources of information, lack of digital descriptions of the parts, constrained time restrictions and need for significant do- main knowledge expertise. The reverse engineering process must yield modern CAD models capable of driving state-of-the art CAM processes. The MERGE system aims at making the re- verse engineering process more effective, using both intuitive in- teraction and visualization as key components, by enabling quick identification and resolution of inconsistencies among various re- sources in a unified environment. The MERGE system also aims at simplifying the reverse engineering process by integrating var- ious computational agents to assist the reverse engineer in pro- cessing information and in creating the desired CAD models.