STL to Parametric CAD

Table of Contents

1. Overview 2. Without Bench 3. Integrations 4. How Bench Solves This

Overview

Engineering teams constantly receive geometry that carries shape but not design intent. Mesh outputs from the simualtaion / CAE team from topology optimisation.

Small design changes can force a full manual rebuild. Engineers guess the original design drivers, recreate the feature tree from scratch, and iterate against the reference by eye until the geometry matches.

For a single component this can take days and more complex geometry significantly longer.

Bench removes this bottleneck by reconstructing the geometry as a clean parametric model that matches the reference exactly. The result is published directly into the engineer's CAD software of choice; Onshape, Solidworks, Catia.

The geometry is fully parametric and is ready to edit, sweep, and feed into simulation, optimisation, and manufacturing workflows.

Up to 95%

Time Saved

on STL to parametric CAD reverse engineering tasks.

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Without Bench

Identify Design Drivers

Identify the core design drivers (key dimensions, interfaces, symmetry, functional regions, material assumptions, etc.).

Create Base Geometry

Build an initial parametric base from scratch that roughly captures the overall form and main features.

Iterate and Develop Geometry

Refine the model itaretively, constantly comparing the reference (non‑parametric model) against the new parametric version until the shapes are effectively indistinguishable for the intended use.

Geometry Completed

Once the model is within acceptable tolerance, the engineer finalises the feature tree, and adopts this parametric model.

Without Bench, turning non-parametric models into useful parametric models means painstaking manual reverse engineering: rebuilding geometry feature by feature, iterating until it roughly matches the original, and only then having a model that can actually be edited, simulated, or reused.

Load & Mark Up

Load your model into Bench and define the parameters that matter. Use edge-to-edge selections to capture functional dimensions, fuselage length, wing chord, hole spacing, whatever drives your design.

Reconstruction In Bench

Bench analyses the marked-up geometry and rebuilds the geometry using parametric operations: sketches, lofts, patterns, features, honouring the defined parameters.

Engineers can inspect the rebuilt geometry directly inside Bench before pushing it to their native CAD software. Reconstruction is up to 95% faster than manual reconstructrion on a full vehicle-scale model.

Reconstruction In CAD

Bench reconstructs the geometry directly into your CAD software of choice (Onshape, Solidworks, or Catia etc), building the part live.

The result has a full feature tree, indistinguishable from a model built natively.