Hexagon Pairs the ATLASCAN Pro Handheld Scanner With Geomagic Design X to Speed Up MRO Reverse Engineering

Reverse engineering used to be the bottleneck in MRO

For maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) teams, the hardest part of fixing an aging part is often not the repair — it's getting the geometry back. The original CAD is missing, the supplier went under, or the component was modified in the field years ago. Traditionally, an engineer photographs the part, measures key dimensions by hand, and rebuilds a parametric model from scratch in mainstream CAD. On a complex aircraft cabin fitting that can take days, and every hour of aircraft-on-ground time is expensive.

What Hexagon changed

Hexagon's Portable Metrology Division has introduced a workflow that connects its ATLASCAN Pro handheld 3D scanner directly to Geomagic Design X, the reverse-engineering platform Hexagon now owns. Instead of scan-then-export-then-model, the scanner streams high-density point data straight into the CAD environment. Engineers scan a damaged bracket, a worn connector, or a discontinued trim piece from any angle on a worktop, and the software helps reconstruct a clean, editable solid model in the same session.

Eight times faster — and what that unlocks

Hexagon cites rebuild speeds up to eight times faster than mainstream CAD software for this kind of work, with a full scan-to-CAD loop measured in hours rather than days. For MRO that reframes the economics: on-demand replacement parts become practical without keeping a warehouse of obsolete inventory. Aircraft Interiors International highlights the aircraft cabin use case specifically — cabin MRO shops can reverse-engineer a broken trim or mounting part and have it reproduced locally instead of waiting on an OEM lead time measured in weeks.

Why handheld, and why now

The ATLASCAN Pro is built to be portable and intuitive: lightweight, fast to set up, and able to capture missing detail and high-density data on small parts as easily as large assemblies. Pairing that with Geomagic Design X's scan-to-CAD toolset means the barrier to entry drops from 'hire a metrology specialist' to 'hand the scanner to a technician.' Hexagon says the combined solution is available now globally, with local support and maintenance in each region.

The takeaway for workshops and small shops

You don't need to be an aerospace MRO to benefit. Any shop that services legacy equipment — classic cars, industrial machinery, medical devices, or consumer products long out of production — faces the same missing-CAD problem. A handheld scanner plus a mature reverse-engineering package turns 'we can't get that part anymore' into 'we'll reproduce it this afternoon.' As scanning hardware gets lighter and software gets smarter about turning point clouds into parametric solids, scan-to-CAD is quietly becoming a standard workshop skill rather than a specialist service. Source reporting: 3D Printing Industry, Aircraft Interiors International, and Hexagon product pages.