Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
How to reverse engineer CAD models using curve approximation
By Zhang Z et al.·2026·View original on Europe PMC →
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Original publication title: Interactive CAD Reverse Modeling via Variational Curve Approximation.
Plain-English summary
This research focuses on improving the way we create editable computer-aided design (CAD) models from complex mesh data, which can be tricky. The authors developed a new method that combines different steps of the modeling process to make it easier and more accurate. Their approach helps to identify and refine curves on the surface of the mesh, ensuring that the final CAD model is both precise and consistent in structure. They also introduced techniques to maintain the original design's order and relationships. Overall, their method shows better results in terms of accuracy and usability compared to previous techniques.
Abstract
Reconstructing editable CAD models from mesh data remains a fundamental yet challenging problem in reverse engineering. Existing methods often struggle to achieve both geometric accuracy and topological consistency, especially when recovering analytic design intent from complex meshes. We present an interactive CAD reverse modeling framework based on variational curve approximation, which bridges mesh segmentation and parametric reconstruction in a unified manner. Our method extracts surface-aligned cutting curves from segmented regions and refines them through a variational approximation process that encodes primitive attributes and geometric constraints. This enables the automatic recovery of closed loops, constraint relations, and operation parameters, leading to a compact and topologically consistent CAD representation. In addition, a coplanar profile detection and voxel-similarity-based Boolean inference are developed to restore the topological order of the original modeling sequence. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our approach achieves higher geometric fidelity, better structural consistency, and improved automation compared with stateof- the-art techniques. The reconstructed models are watertight, topologically consistent, and readily applicable to downstream CAD design tasks.
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Search related cases →Original publication on Europe PMC: https://europepmc.org/article/MED/41921159