The Brainstorm is a section of Product Design & Development where we talk with industry leaders to get their perspective on issues critical to the overall design engineering marketplace. In this issue, we ask:
Is reverse engineering an act of simply copying another design or is it a tool to be used as a cost-cutting means to document legacy designs?
Tim Nakari, General Manager, VP of Sales, www.protogenic.com
With the improvements in part quality, material properties and the growing availability of direct manufacturing technologies, the phrase “design for manufacturing” has taken on a whole new meaning and reverse engineering is a vital component of that.
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Beyond mere metal to plastics conversion, we are seeing more and more people taking existing machined, stamped, even cast metal components, redesigning them to combine with other mating parts to form a new plastic piece that’s ready for direct digital manufacturing.
These new parts would have been completely un-manufacturable in the past, yet they are now not only possible, but they are reducing inventories, lowering manufacturing labor, and drastically cutting production costs.
Reverse engineering isn’t just copying an old design, it’s taking a hard look at how things have been done, and reinventing how they could and should be done in the future.
Michael Raphael, President & Chief Engineer, Direct Dimensions and Todd Grimm, Founder & President, T.A. Grimm & Associates
"Reverse engineering" is not really a bad word; it's been a part of design and manufacturing for centuries. Certainly, there are those that have used 3-D scanning to “pilfer” someone else’s product design.
Fortunately this dark side of the technology isn’t common. Because of that negative context though, the term “reverse engineering’ is becoming less used for these applications and technologies and is being replaced by the umbrella term: "3-D Imaging."
Regardless, reverse engineering or 3-D imaging, is a legitimate process that allows a company to benchmark its competitor’s designs, convert legacy parts to digital formats, and capture hand-sculpted shapes for use within a CAD model.
In the true sense of the term, there is some form of design, analysis or interrogation performed on this new digital 3-D CAD model that is generated from a 3-D scanner. In other words, an engineer is still required to finalize the design.
In direct reply to the question, reverse engineering is a 3-D imaging application that can assist in cutting manufacturing costs for a legacy item that lacks proper design documentation. With an “as-exists” definition in 3-D CAD, the part can be redesigned to drive 
out costs. But it would be best to focus on product improvements of any kind, not just costs. For example, a legacy part may be scanned and reverse engineered for weight reductions, performance gains, material substitutions, design for manufacturability (DFM) improvements and better aesthetic appeal.
Some also consider reverse engineering for the practical matter of replicating tools and dies for their legacy parts. In this case, the design is being copied but for legitimate purposes.
Michael and Todd are both members of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) 3-D Imaging Technical Group. For more information on SME visit www.sme.org.
Alex Hussain, Design Engineer, HumanCentric
At HumanCentric, we find reverse engineering techniques very helpful in the product design process, although it is unlikely that we would ever try to replicate another design or feature. With a goal to develop innovative products based on strong fundamentals in human factors, design and engineering, virtually all of our projects begin with a research phase where we review competitive products to understand why they are successful or struggling in the marketplace.
Rather than simply copying legacy designs, our process provides information on current marketplace trends and techniques, as well as insights into making a product stand out among its competitors. Throughout this process, we keep our research as broad as possible and often explore products in completely unrelated fields to learn how similar design objectives are accomplished.
For some projects, this involves only a general gathering of interesting images, forms and color palettes for inspiration and brainstorming. For other projects, we investigate products in depth to better understand the techniques and processes used to create innovative feature and characteristic.
To describe this process as “reverse engineering” is a bit of a stretch, since we seldom attempt to replicate a specific design feature. Rather, we are simply trying to understand the best features of each product we analyze and then determine if and how those features might be useful to the product we are designing.
Jason Blume, Electronic Systems Project Manager, Sensor Products
Reverse engineering is not just the act of taking a finished product or idea and finding out how it works, it is the means of understanding what the device is doing and decide whether it can do more.
The designs that make the most money are more often then not the second generations of a product or a second tier manufacturer who has found a different way to market and produce the product.
The reason this is the case, is the act of creation is an entirely different form then production and marketing. When creating a product the designer strives to make the product work in preset objectives. All the energy of development is put into that.
A second generation product can ask the question: What else can the product do? This is why reverse engineering should not be regarded as copying, but realization of potential. Inventors are seldom recognized as their vision does not resemble the product being sold.
Karl Matthews, Director of Product Management, Geomagic
Over the last five years, reverse engineering has become part of a bigger movement known as digital shape sampling and processing (DSSP).
DSSP is about capturing the shape of an existing part and producing a digital representation that can be used for a variety of purposes, including manufacturing physical copies, archiving and documenting a design, conducting engineering analysis such as CFD and FEA, and comparing an as-built part with the as-designed reference model – a form of digital inspection and quality control.
Recent advances have expanded DSSP beyond reverse engineering – the process of simply producing an accurate digital copy. With the introduction of Geomagic Fashion, for example, DSSP software can now extract the original design intent from a scan of a physical model, kick-starting the process of modeling and adapting that design in CAD. Users can start with physical models and prototypes of a new design (such as a car body sculpted in clay) and quickly get to a digital, CAD-ready representation.
The time and cost savings from DSSP have made it an important part of the product development cycle for manufacturers worldwide. In DSSP we are witnessing a radical transformation in the way we design, engineer and manufacture products.
Abby K. Monaco, CID, Product Manager, Intercept Technology
The benefits of reverse engineering are most often overlooked because the process of reverse engineering a layout design or schematic is either not readily available in the software applications or it is a time consuming process that takes longer than simply redesigning a circuit from the beginning.
Consider the capability offered in Intercept’s Pantheon PCB/Hybrid/RF layout application. However, a designer can read in Gerber artwork, reverse engineer it into a fully intelligent layout design in a matter of hours, and then use Intercept’s Palindrome Reverse Engineering option to build a schematic for that layout (using library symbol and part information, or by automatically generating parts and symbols) in the Mozaix schematic capture application.
This means that any portion of a legacy design, with or without a supporting schematic, can be revived either in part or in full much faster than it would take to redesign the same circuitry from scratch. While the time saved is of obvious appeal, there is also the reliability of knowing that this is a proven circuit that has been built before. If a circuit is redesigned from scratch, it must go through a full test cycle to ensure that the redesign contains no newly introduced mistakes.
While the time and cost benefits in the above scenario are fairly obvious, there are even more complex reverse engineering scenarios that can lead to exponential returns on design time and costs.
Consider a situation where a portion of legacy circuitry needs to be captured and reused in a number of future design revisions. With Intercept’s software, it is possible to reverse engineer that portion of circuitry into a synchronized layout and schematic design, and then build that as a block symbol and geometry placed any number of times into future schematic and layout designs. This would allow designers to simply pull reusable circuitry from a library, reducing repetition among a design team to a bare minimum.
Eric Vaughn, President & CEO, DNA Group
Some time ago, the source of competitive advantage shifted from clever hardware design to the intelligence of software and the manner in which data is processed.
With the ever-increasing integration of peripheral components and subsystems into system-on-chip (SoC) design, there is a corresponding decrease in the complexity of both hardware and PCB layout. While inputs and outputs can be analyzed and scenarios tested, it is difficult to understand the nuances of everything happening in the software.
Therefore, reverse engineering of functions and capabilities that are software based is difficult, if not impossible.
A natural evolution of this trend will be the standardization of subsystems with critical components. Hardware, PCBs and chips will be documented in application note style reference design. The differentiation between suppliers and products will be based on software functionality. Legacy design documentation will be essential for this transformation.
This type of reverse engineering provides for an understanding of why circuits have been laid out the way they are. This knowledge will allow designers and manufacturers to take advantage of greater integration, decrease costs and increase reliability through maximizing the capabilities of each chip and board-based circuit used in modern electronic devices.