I agree that technology hasn't made this into a complete no brainer, BUT..... The industry has come a long way from using 'shrink rules' to dimension molds and dies. As to reverse engineering, in my business there are a considerable number of vendors that do reverse engineering using anything from manual measurements to FARO equipment. It all ends up in some software like Solidworks and then on to machining.

But this is missing the point here. Someone went through ALL this or something similar to produce what is now available. Would it have been that much more difficult to hold better tolerances to get an accurate part that fit rather than just a part?