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posted by takyon on Tuesday January 08 2019, @01:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the metamesh dept.

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."


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 08 2019, @01:20AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 08 2019, @01:20AM (#783501)

    And the POV-Ray fans rejoiced!

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by qzm on Tuesday January 08 2019, @02:07AM (1 child)

    by qzm (3260) on Tuesday January 08 2019, @02:07AM (#783523)

    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

      by mhajicek (51) on Tuesday January 08 2019, @07:08AM (#783583)

      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

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Tuesday January 08 2019, @02:48AM (#783533) Homepage Journal

    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

    by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Tuesday January 08 2019, @07:20AM (#783587) Homepage Journal

    And, it doesn't look like a model to me.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 08 2019, @03:16PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 08 2019, @03:16PM (#783688)

    So this is like a 3D model de-compiler?

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