Reverse engineering, once considered as something practiced by those who lack original concepts, has now become an engineering science. Japanese success in new products has led to reverse engineering being considered as a design process. Many American engineering colleges have courses in reverse engineering to focus on redesign, instead of original design, as a problem solving approach. Even the automobile industry uses a variant design methodology, referred to as direct engineering, to replace more general original design methods.

It is also useful in converting conceptual design into 3D model through clay modeling and digitizing.