Abstract: Reverse engineering is the process of extracting the solid features from the measured point data of the existing parts. The feature extraction based on point cloud is one of the key techniques in reverse engineering. A novel algorithm is proposed for feature recognition of revolving surface. The ant colony algorithm (ACA) is applied in reverse engineering for data processing. Firstly,the mathematic model is established which is suitable for extraction of feature parameter using ACA, and then a parameter optimization using ACA is processed. Finally the feature parameter is extracted and the surface is reconstructed. The new method is proved to be effective and flexible by experiments. The accuracy and efficiency to extract the parameters of revolving surface are improved and this method is suitable for the revolving surface in discretionary 3D-space.