Reasons for reverse engineering:

Interoperability.
Lost documentation: Reverse engineering often is done because the documentation of a particular device has been lost (or was never written), and the person who built it is no longer available. Integrated circuits often seem to have been designed on obsolete, proprietary systems, which means that the only way to incorporate the functionality into new technology is to reverse-engineer the existing chip and then re-design it.
Product analysis. To examine how a product works, what components it consists of, estimate costs, and identify potential patent infringement.
Digital update/correction. To update the digital version (e.g. CAD model) of an object to match an "as-built" condition.
Security auditing.
Military or commercial espionage. Learning about an enemy's or competitor's latest research by stealing or capturing a prototype and dismantling it.
Removal of copy protection, circumvention of access restrictions.
Creation of unlicensed/unapproved duplicates.
Academic/learning purposes.
Curiosity
Competitive technical intelligence (understand what your competitor is actually doing versus what they say they are doing)
Learning: learn from others' mistakes. Do not make the same mistakes that others have already made and subsequently corrected.

Reverse Engineering to Discover Technical Principals of Device
By Kelvin B Aniston

Reverse engineering is the process of discovering the technological principles of a device, object or system during analysis of its structure, function and operation. It often involves taking something away from each other and analyzing its workings in detail to be used in repairs or to try to make a new device or program that does the same thing without copying anything from the original.

In a general sense, this process is simply an effort to try and recreate the design of a product by examining the product itself. An excellent reverse engineer needs to have considerable skills in reading software and they also need to have solid analytical skills. Reverse engineers need also be able to research efficiently because these services can raise many questions.

An additional type of reverse engineering involves producing 3-D images of manufactured parts when blueprint is not available in order to remanufacture the part. In the process of reverse engineering to reverse engineer a part, initially the part is measured by a coordinate measuring machine. After this process a 3-D wire frame image will generate and will be displayed on a monitor. After completion of the measuring process the wire frame image is dimensioned using this method you can reverse engineer any part.

If the source code of any program is lost then reverse engineering is used to retrieve the source code of a program because the processes like how the program perform certain operations and to identify malicious content in a program such as a virus or to adapt a program written for use with one microprocessor for use with another. For the purpose of copying or duplicating programs may raise the issue of copyright violation. In some cases, the licensed use of software specifically prohibits reverse engineering.

Here is some list of common uses of reverse engineering:

• It can develop consumer electronics devices. • It can help us to recover business data from proprietary file formats. • It can create hardware documentation from binary drivers. • It can break a software copy protection. • It can also help us in criminal investigation.

To get more information about outsourcing structural drafting and steel detailing services, please visit us at: http://www.hitechcaddservices.com

E-mail us your structural drafting and detailing requirements at: info@hitechcaddservices.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kelvin_B_Aniston
http://EzineArticles.com/?Reverse-Engineering-to-Discover-Technical-Principals-of-Device&id=2616695