Functional reverse design: Method and application

Reverse engineering is to determine the relevant form and functions and their relationships for a component or product in order to generate a complete engineering representation. Normally reverse engineers are focusing on the geometric model from point cloud data that represent the form of the physical object being considered. This in essence is not reverse engineering, but geometric reverse modeling. Actually the original intrinsic knowledge is located in the function model of the existing product, and the typical reverse geometric modeling and redesign may cause the problem of knowledge property. In this paper, it is considered that the reverse engineering shall be extended to the functional modeling phase, and a functional reverse design method is proposed to overcome the shortcoming of geometric reverse modeling and redesign. Functional reverse design is conducted through two sequential steps: functional reverse engineering and functional reengineering. Functional reverse engineering is to reproduce the original function model through a form-to-function mapping procedure, and functional reengineering is to improve or update the mapped original function model for derivative function modeling. A case study is offered to illustrate the proposed functional reverse design method.