Backflip’s 3D scan to CAD tool enables you to reconstruct 3D scans or other 3D mesh files into CAD geometry built with standard CAD operations and a familiar feature tree. You can kick off an AI reconstruction job in both the Backflip web app or our plugins to existing CAD software.

Starting a 3D scan reconstruction job

To reconstruct a 3D scan, you’ll need a file containing 3D geometry in one of the following formats:

Note that Backflip cannot accept raw point cloud file formats such as LAS/LAZ, E57, or RCS—you’ll need to export these as a compatible mesh file from your 3D scanning software.

1. Navigate to your Backflip library and click on New/New Part. This will open up the new part dialog for selecting the part or parts you’d like to add to your Backflip library. Note that you can add parts from your Backflip library in both our web app and any of our plugins to your CAD software.

Clicking on either of these two buttons will bring up the system file selector to choose a compatible mesh file for upload. Dragging and dropping a mesh file or files onto the web app Library screen will also start the New Part dialog.

1. Select the part or parts you’d like to add to your Backflip library. You can upload parts one at a time or in bulk, by dragging and dropping files onto the upload area, or by clicking on it to open up the system file picker and selecting the file(s) you'd like to upload.

1. Configure your part. Select the settings you'd like to use for the new part:
   1. Orientation: we strongly recommend using the ‘Auto-orient’ setting to automatically align the mesh you provided with the standard base planes (Front, Right, Top). That makes it easier for the AI model to reconstruct the part geometry with features aligned to standard, easily human-editable planes, sketches, and features. You can use the + and - tools next to each X, Y, or Z axis at the bottom of the mesh preview window to also rotate the mesh in 90˚ increments around those axes.
   2. Part name: if you’d like to rename the part to something different than the uploaded filename, you can do so here.
   3. Modeled in: most standard 3D mesh file formats don’t contain dimensional units (this is an unfortunate industry-wide problem) so you’ll need to select what unit system the mesh file was exported in so that Backflip can properly scale the mesh to match it’s actual dimensions
   4. AI Mode (Fast, Thinking): choose which AI mode you'd like to use when reconstructing the mesh file into CAD. Thinking Mode generally produces the best results, especially for complex geometries but consumes more credits and takes longer (15-45 min typical). Fast Mode is much faster (1-5 min) and uses less credits but can only accurately reconstruct simpler geometries.

1. Click the convert to CAD button to start the reconstruction process. The popover will close and you’ll be brought to part page for your newly created part. You’ll notice that the in-process CAD conversion will show up in the Files section of the new part page. You can click on the converted CAD file whenever you'd like, the app will show you an animation of the mesh until the new file is ready.

Viewing results and selecting a CAD option

Once the reconstruction job is done, you can inspect the results. Click on the new CAD file that was created in the part page to open up the part viewer.

You’ll notice a couple different features and tools within the part viewer. Let’s walk through them

Inspection tools