Reverse Engineering for Rhino

rhinoreverse™ 2 is fully integrated in Rhino 4.
It enables the user to transform digitised surfaces (point meshes) to spline based faces.

Key features include:

• Ease of Use
• Innovative New Algorithms
• High Face Quality
• Fast Skinning Method
• Technical Features
• Healing, Relief and Patch


Ease of Use

Arbitrary faces can be defined, to represent design intentions like feature lines very smoothly. The user only has to sketch a grid, containing boundary curves for all new faces (Figure 1 to 3). For this sketching procedure he only needs the mouse. The use of rhinoreverse is very intuitive and easy.








Innovative new Algorithms

Innovative new algorithms to calculate and handle trimmed faces bring exceptional advantages.

Compared to rhinoreverse™ 1 the new version generates trimmed faces. This procedure enables the user to define arbitrary faces by up to 25 boundary curves. Figure 4 shows such a typical trimmed face, highlighted in yellow, with more than 4 boundary curves. Decoupling the approximation routine from the sketched boundary curves improves the shape quality a lot. The shape of the faces is now only dependent from the shape of the given point mesh. The use of trimmed faces also reduces the manual effort to around 50% (compared to rhinoreverse™ 1): Less curves have to be sketched. To sketch the curves for the model shown in figure 1 we need today approximately 25 faces. Using rhinoreverse™ 1 we needed approximately 50.

High Face Quality

If the option "healing" is used, the transitions between calculated faces will be adjusted to Rhino´s current tolerance settings. This ensures, that the resulting face model can be used afterwards for solid operations or NC programming without any rework.


Fast Skinning Method

Additional option to rapidly create simplified faces (which was available in rhinoreverse™ 1, too), has been revised and improved. The goal is to represent point meshes quick-and-dirty with a small number of faces. The example in figure 5 shows the representation of the head by the use of only 4 NURBS-faces.




Technical Features

• Several import interfaces for mesh data
• (*.stl, *.wrl, *.vrml, *.af, *.nas, *.txt)

• Simple sketching of boundary curves on the
• given mesh data by using the mouse

• Flexible definition of the faces by 2 to 25
• boundary curves

• Optional mode, to skin the point mesh
• quick-and-dirty with a low number of faces

• Flexible use of arbitrary t-joins for local
• refinements

• Use of only one file (.3dm) for saving all data

• Automatic calculation of topology by
• using graph algorithms

• Automatic approximation of start faces

• Robustness against small holes and sharp
• edges in the mesh

• Automatic recalculation of face transitions
• to Rhino´s tolerance settings

• Robustness against gaps in the point mesh

• Additional "healing"-function, to improve quality
• of already existing face models: Automatic
• elimination of small gaps, steps and overlaps

• Additional "relief"-function to cover large
• country surfaces

• Additional "patch"-function to fill holes and
• create surface blends


Healing, Relief and Patch

Powerful 'healing' algorithm - RR Heal

Existing NURBS-face models can be healed:
Small gaps, steps and overlaps will be filled automatically. The goal is to improve data
quality in order to enable solid-modeling
and NC-milling.

Relief Surfaces - RR Relief

In geography and architecture large relief surfaces are given in STL format. But for engineering tasks often NURBS face data are needed. To transform them, the method RR Relief was designed. This function works similar to Rhinos "drape" command.

Advantages: The resulting NURBS face shows a homogenous distribution of control points. Also steep surface areas are processed well. The handling of large meshes is simple and fast.

Patch Command - RR Patch

In order to create complex patches the function RR Patch was designed. The function works similar to Rhinos "patch" command.

Advantages: The procedure allows to additional include design curves in order to define the inner shape of the patch. A robust interpolation scheme - which is tolerance based - enables to generate a face within Rhino's internal absolute tolerance. This ensures joinable faces and makes RR Patch easy to use: The user does not have to set lots of parameters.


Download an Evaluation Copy