With the state of today’s economy, every penny counts especially when considering purchasing any type of technology that will make your business more efficient and competitive. Reverse engineering/inspection software is no different. Making a reverse engineering/inspection software buying decision requires you to carefully consider many issues. Will you be doing reverse engineering and/or inspection? Are you purchasing new hardware (laser or touch probe CMM) or will you be using existing hardware? Will you be using point cloud processing software in conjunction with a CAD package or standalone? What types of data do your customers and suppliers need? These are just a few of the many questions you should be posing to yourself and your organization before making a purchasing decision.

Last, but not least is the issue of money, that is, spending it on the right reverse engineering/inspection software solution. You may be thinking too much about total cost of ownership (TCO) for the software purchase and seeing it is as a draining cost center. We at HighRES, however, can change your mindset because we talk in terms of return on investment (ROI) for your software purchase and the fact that it can contribute to your bottom line as a profit center. Is you business currently economically challenged (and whose isn’t these days)? No problem, because HighRES software starts out very affordable when compared with the competition. You can use the software to generate revenue immediately and come back to us later to order upgrades to your initial investment that provide more powerful features and capabilities as your needs and business grow. We also offer comprehensive training for all levels of our products that will help you get up to speed and generating revenue from our technology quicker.

We really encourage this approach because you won’t “over buy” at the outset and become overwhelmed with features and capabilities that you probably don’t need and won’t use until you become more comfortable with the technology. Why struggle and get frustrated with the wrong technology that is not suited to your budget and workflow? At HighRES we pride ourselves on discussing and understanding YOUR needs before making any specific software recommendations.

Here are just a few innovative features and capabilities that HighRES reverse engineering/inspection software products offer:

• Enhanced multi-threaded software that lets you use one thread for graphics and another thread for behind-the-scenes computation. There are no resource conflicts between graphics and math functions.
• Draw and dimension on the fly because of the seamless interaction between the HighRES software and supported CAD packages – again, there are no penalties resulting from resource conflicts.
  
• You can change out probes (hot swap) while the HighRES software is running. Advanced automatic probe compensation lets you use any type of hard probe, regardless of size, as well as point probes with laser scanners.
• Our latest products have upgraded point cloud thinning and cleaning that ensures absolute integrity of processed data.
• New point cloud data file readers and translators provide the ability to import and thin large scan data sets. This process also strips out extraneous, unnecessary data (such as vectors and binary data that are not required or used by HighRES software). You just retain the data essential for creating 3D models in supported CAD packages.
• Compatibility with 64-bit computers, operating systems, and CAD software is coming soon!

We've briefly discussed some of the important considerations and choices you have to make before deciding on a reverse engineering/inspection software package that is right for you, your company, and your bottom line. As we said in our last blog post, don't buy what you don't need. In terms of capabilities and price, we’re different from the competition and would welcome the opportunity to tell you why and show you how.

Whether it's vitamins or software, we've all been guilty of falling into the following trap -- "If a little bit is good, then more has got to be better." As we all know, more is not always better. In fact, too much can be worse than nothing at all.

So what does this have to do with reverse engineering technology?

Most people tend to "over-buy" when it comes to software whether it's technical or just for the office. For example, how many of the capabilities of your document processing software do you actually use. If you're like most users, probably less than 20%, if that. A similar low percentage also goes for technical software that you use, such as CAD, and CAM.

Some, but not all, reverse engineering software packages provide an unexpected and unwelcome similar fate. That is, forcing you to purchase, learn, and struggle with a myriad features and capabilities that you are not likely to need or use. This issue and the frustration surrounding it will be the topic of our next few blogs. We'll discuss the important considerations and choices you have to make before deciding on a reverse engineering/inspection software package that is right for you, your company, and your bottom line. In other words . . . don't buy what you don't need, can't use, and won't profit from.

We'd like to welcome you to the ReverseEngineering.com blog. This is a new endeavor for us and another way of communicating with you on several issues and topics.

In this blog we will regularly keep you informed on what's happening with our company's products and services. We'll also keep you informed with our view of industry-wide events and trends in scanning, digitizing, point cloud processing, and CAD, just to name a few in the areas of reverse engineering and inspection/measurement.

It's a challenging time for our industry, but there are also a number of opportunities and emerging markets that you can take advantage of for your benefit.

Our goal is to keep you informed on the issues that affect your business and bottom line, and helping you succeed. We're here to not just help you to survive, but thrive!