Integrating RE/RP for Rapid Product Development Based on Haptic Modeling

Abstract

As product varieties increase and life cycles shorten, the need for rapid product development becomes critical to maintain competitiveness in the market. Reverse engineering technology enables us to quickly create the CAD model of product. Rapid prototyping is another technology that can shorten the product development time by fabricating the physical prototype of a part using layered manufacturing technique. And how to integrate these two technologies to facilitate rapid product development is an important issue. Haptic modeling has the advantages of allowing the user to touch, feel, manipulate, and model point cloud in a 3D environment that is similar to a natural setting. A high-quality STL file can be obtained from the haptic modeling system which is ideal for rapid prototyping. In this paper, a novel method of integrating RE/RP for rapid product development based on haptic modeling is presented, which can increase the efficiency for RE/RP integration and promote product innovative design. Case study is also given to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method.