Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984
Engineers can now reverse-engineer 3D models
A system that uses a technique called constructive solid geometry (CSG) is allowing MIT researchers to deconstruct objects and turn them into 3D models, thereby allowing them to reverse-engineer complex things.
The system appeared in a paper entitled "InverseCSG: Automatic Conversion of 3D Models to CSG Trees" by Tao Du, Jeevana Priya Inala, Yewen Pu, Andrew Spielberg, Adriana Schulz, Daniela Rus, Armando Solar-Lezama, and Wojciech Matusik.
"At a high level, the problem is reverse engineering a triangle mesh into a simple tree. Ideally, if you want to customize an object, it would be best to have access to the original shapes — what their dimensions are and how they're combined. But once you combine everything into a triangle mesh, you have nothing but a list of triangles to work with, and that information is lost," said Tao Du to 3DPrintingIndustry. "Once we recover the metadata, it's easier for other people to modify designs."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 08 2019, @01:20AM
And the POV-Ray fans rejoiced!
(Score: 3, Informative) by qzm on Tuesday January 08 2019, @02:07AM (1 child)
Turning a triangle mesh in to a CSG tree is very cool, quite useful, and damn impressive..
However it is in no way related to 'Reverse-Engineering' a 3D model.. Who says the 3D model was build from CSG in the first place? many/most are not.
And having a CSG tree is not always a great advantage to having a surface description in the first place.
So, impressive and useful for a few? definitely. However, PLEASE don't try and redefine words like 'Reverse Engineer' just because they make a good headline.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Tuesday January 08 2019, @07:08AM
In addition, engineers have been reverse engineering parts forever, whether there's a triangle mesh of it or not. Many CAD programs have had automatic feature recognition for decades; this is merely an improvement on that, not an entirely new thing.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday January 08 2019, @02:48AM
You say that like it's a bad thing.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday January 08 2019, @07:20AM
And, it doesn't look like a model to me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 08 2019, @03:16PM
So this is like a 3D model de-compiler?