This paper describes a method for digitizing the compound surfaces which are comprised of several unknown feature shapes such as base surface, and draft wall. From the reverse engineering's point of view, the main step is to digitize or gather three-dimensional points on an object rapidly and precisely. As wen known, the non-contact digitizing apparatus using a laser or structured light can rapidly obtain a great bulk of digitized points, while the touch or scanning probe gives higher accuracy by directly contacting its stylus onto the part surface. By combining those two methods, unknown features can be digitized efficiently. The paper proposes a digitizing methodology using the approximated surface model obtained from laser-scanned data, followed by the use of a scanning probe. Each surface boundary curve and the confining area is investigated to select the most suitable digitizing path topology, which is similar to generating NC tool-paths. The methodology was tested with a simple physical model whose shape is comprised of a base surface, draft walls and cavity volumes.
