Reverse engineering is the process of discovering the technological principles of a device, object or system through the analysis of its structure, function and operation. It often involves taking something apart and analyzing its workings in detail to be used in maintenance, or to try to make a new device or program that does the same thing without utilizing any physical part of the original.
Reverse engineering has its origins in the analysis of hardware for commercial or military advantage. It is still used to this day in military or commercial espionage. Learning about an enemy's or competitor's latest research by stealing or capturing a prototype and dismantling it. Although this sounds like something you would see in a James Bond movie, there are many other functiuons for
reverse engineering including to update the digitized version of an object, product analysis and for academic or learning purposes.
One of today's main uses for reverse engineering is to retreive lost documentation. Reverse engineering often is done because the documentation of a particular device has been lost (or was never written), and the person who built it is no longer available. Integrated circuits often seem to have been designed on obsolete, proprietary systems, which means that the only way to incorporate the functionality into new technology is to
reverse-engineer the existing chip and then re-design it.
Reverse engineering can be applied to both machinery and digitized software. Applications 3D uses programs such as
Polyworks and Imageware in addition to 3D scanning and both
Class A and Solid modeling techniques to achieve optimal results in the reproduction and analysis of elements.
