Patent ID: 7315644

Claim:
A method of analyzing a cause of destruction of an assembly, the assembly having an assembled condition at a point in time prior to being destroyed, the method comprising: obtaining first and second components that formed part of the assembly when the assembly was in the assembled condition and that have been separated from the assembly and each other as a result of the assembly being destroyed by the cause of destruction, the first and second components having an original relative position prior to the assembly being destroyed, the original relative position being that which the first and second components shared relative to each other when the assembly was in the assembled condition; producing an electronic representation of a three-dimensional surface contour of at least part of each of the first and second components by obtaining measurements of each of the first and second components using a surface contour scanning device; producing an electronic representation of a portion of the assembly in three-dimensional virtual space, the representation of the portion of the assembly incorporating the representations of the three-dimensional surface contours of the first and second components with the surface contours positioned relative to each other in the virtual space in a manner based on the original relative position of the first and second components; and analyzing the cause of destruction of the assembly via the representation of the portion of the assembly.