The reverse-engineering solution that enables true interoperability between digitized polygonal models and your CAD/CAM applications
PolyWorks|Modeler™ is a comprehensive reverse-engineering software solution that allows extracting optimal CAD entities—curves, surfaces, parametric sketches, and prismatic features—from polygonal models of digitized parts to serve as the starting point in your professional CAD modeling solution.
Polygonal Modeling
The first step in a reverse-engineering workflow consists in transforming digitized point clouds into surface-based polygonal models, also called meshes. Polygonal models are more compact, more accurate, and less noisy than raw point clouds and are directly handled by industrial applications such as milling, 3D printing, and aerodynamic simulation.
Create polygonal models of digitized parts in real time
Adopt effective scanning methods that ensure quality and precision with real-time quality meshing technology.
Repair and optimize imperfectly digitized geometry
Fill holes, smooth and rebuild surfaces, clean boundaries, recover sharp edges, make surfaces watertight, and more.
Apply CAD operations to polygonal models
Extrude boundaries, offset surfaces, reconstruct fillets, perform Boolean operations with CAD models, and more.
Surface Modeling
NURBS surfaces are lightweight representations of simple geometric features and complex organic shapes that are commonly used to replicate and transfer the surfaces of polygonal models built from digitized point clouds to CAD/CAM software. PolyWorks|Modeler offers an intuitive curvature-driven NURBS surfacing approach that generates superior surface continuity, smoothness, and accuracy.
Create curve networks and surface patches
Define critical part features such as boundaries, sharp edges, and fillet tangents, while NURBS patches are automatically generated.
Generate accurate, smooth, and continuous surfaces
Fit patches to the polygonal model with handling of trimmed surfaces and T-junctions, two-step fitting, and blending to existing CAD models.
Transfer surfaces to your CAD/CAM solution
Export NURBS surfaces to standard CAD/CAM formats, such as IGES or STEP files, for further processing.
Solid Modeling
A fundamental building block in a solid modeling workflow is the parametric 2D sketch. It is used to create solid base features by performing Extrude, Revolve, Sweep, and Loft operations. PolyWorks|Modeler optimizes the extraction of geometric entities on digitized polygonal models to create parametric 2D sketches that serve as the starting point in your CAD solution for generating parametric, associative, and fully editable solid 3D CAD models.
Create sketches from digitized models
Define sketch planes from standard or user-defined planes, and extract outlines by slicing cross-sections of a polygonal model or extracting its silhouette edge.
Create sketch entities and dimensions
Fit parametric sketch entities (arcs, lines, circles, and splines) to the sketch outline, and add dimensions and relations as constraints for the entities.
Transfer PolyWorks sketches to your CAD solution
Import PolyWorks|Modeler’s parametric sketches within your feature-based solid CAD modeler using add-ins for CATIA, NX, Creo, SolidWorks, and Inventor.