In aircraft manufacturing

there are various types of physical toolings such as template

master tooling

mould and so on. It is quite a challenge to convert these physical toolings to digital ones due to their variable forms and complex shapes which comprise freeform surfaces

complicated carved curves and details. In this paper

the 3D metrology and model reconstruction method for digitizing the physical toolings are discussed. First

the crucial geometry elements in design of aircraft manufacture tooling are summed up and analyzed. Then

an integrated 3D metrology

which composites a photogrammetry

a structure light scanner

and an optical tracking tactile probe

is utilized to capture the physical toolings. The integrated metrology combines the advantages of all of the three techniques and is able to provide measuring data with completeness and high precision. Thereafter the strategy for improving the process efficiency is presented by considering the size

form and complexity of the physical toolings. For the tooling with large size and high complexity

the converting strategy is set to not use the whole measuring data

but the surface point clouds

a few basis carved curve points which indicate the structure of the aircraft

and the existing 2D drawings. It is highly efficiency and the precision meets the needs.