Engineering and manufacturing

AI reverse engineering: from the physical part to parametric CAD

Recreating a part that is no longer made usually means hours with calipers and as many redrawing it in CAD. reverse3d gives your AI agent the tools to do it with real dimensions: it reconstructs, cleans, measures, detects geometry and writes the CAD.

Install for freeView on GitHub

The problem

  • Measuring by hand and redrawing in CAD takes hours per part.
  • AI generators create shapes that look similar, not parts with the real dimensions.
  • Professional photogrammetry and reverse-engineering software needs expensive licenses.

What you get

  • A clean, watertight mesh aligned to the axes, at real scale.
  • AABB/OBB dimensions, volume and center of mass in a report.
  • Planes, cylinders and spheres detected with RANSAC, with radii and axes.
  • Editable OpenSCAD and CadQuery code to keep designing.

How to do it with your AI agent

  1. 01

    Capture

    Take 20–60 photos around the part, or use an existing STL/OBJ/PLY scan.

    “Analyze the photos in flange/ and tell me if they are good enough to reconstruct it.”

  2. 02

    Reconstruct and repair

    Photogrammetry (COLMAP) and mesh repair: holes, normals, loose fragments and alignment.

    “Turn the photos in flange/ into a measured 3D model.”

  3. 03

    Measure and extract geometry

    Dimensions, volume and primitives: planes, cylinders and spheres with their parameters.

    “Measure flange.stl and detect its cylinders and planes.”

  4. 04

    Generate the CAD

    Parametric OpenSCAD and CadQuery code, ready to edit or export.

    “Generate the OpenSCAD and CadQuery code for flange.stl.”

From the terminal

reverse3d run scan_to_cad flange.stl output/

Start in 1 minute

Paste this sentence into Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, Gemini CLI, Codex or Windsurf:

Install reverse3d from https://github.com/rellytechgame/Reverse3D-tool following its AGENTS.md. You have my permission to run the installer; don't ask me any questions.

Frequently asked questions

How accurate is it?

It depends on the capture: sharpness, overlap and a scale reference. reverse3d analyzes the photos before reconstructing and tells you which ones to retake. For critical parts, check the key dimensions with calipers.

Does it export STEP?

Today it generates OpenSCAD and CadQuery (which exports STEP from Python). Direct STEP export is on the roadmap.

Can I use it at my company?

Yes. It is Apache-2.0 and everything runs locally: your parts never leave your machine.