: Klocke, F.; Clemens, U.

Abstract
Seven of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft Institutes, each with its own specific area of expertise, united approximately 2 years ago, in order to address the most pressing issues in terms of "Rapid Prototyping". For the Fraunhofer-Geselischaft, the most urgent aims were to develop a method which would permit the direct and fully automatic manufacture of metallic prototypes and tools and on the other, to eradicate the problems associated with data transmission between different modules in the rapid prototyping process chain. The demand from industry for the degree of automation of the generation of CAD-surfaces from measurement points to be as high as possible was a major consideration throughout.