Ray,

What you are describing first here is doing a 3D BestFit analysis to the CAD model, this has nothing to do with reverse engineering. Now, scanning actual data from a part and bringing those points in to a CAD system to manipulate an existing CAD model or to create a new one is a form of reverse engineering, weather you create a program from that model or not. But, this is not all the capabilities reverse engineering has to offer.

What the software I was referring to "RevEng" does, is it creates a CAD model at your CMM. This can be used for prototypes made by hand and in need of reversing, or like you said for producing parts from competitors' samples too.

The power of RevEng is it allows for manipulation of the data collected to be done at the CMM, no matter what data you are collecting, so engineering receives a more complete 3D CAD model that has been somewhat modified already and is not suffering over a cloud of points. This may not be what you need now, but it is good to know about just in case you ever do.

Rich