Curve Freeform Justification

[[Ke...]]

Purchase requires written documentation, so:
Aside from Profile of a Line (Curve), and Profile of non-standard geometries (Freeform), what are a few of the best uses of these software add-ons?

Thanks!

[[Cl...]]

What industry are you in? We are medical device. We quote a ton of stuff that has line/surface profile callouts. The more versatile you are allows you to quote more work. You need curve for a kink point. Curve works great for min/max coordinate, which I use a lot. I use curve for scanning hexalobes recalling them into circle features for the major/minor diameters.

[[Ke...]]

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We are a "bearing company", but we also make steering columns, which have various types of components (machined, stamped, forged, molded, etc).
I do have Curve on one machine, which I use for Min/Max coordinate & Min/Max material thickness (not often, so I forgot to mention in the original post...)

[[Ch...]]

Use curve and freeform to make really good looking graphs. Especially the CAD evaluation plots. You don't need curve/freeform to do this, but you can do a lot more with with Curve and Freeform.

The goal is to show everyone how awesome/fancy curve and freeform are. When it comes to impressing management, never doubt the power of bright lights, loud noises, and pretty pictures.

[[Jo...]]

Communication. The ability to plot, graph, and heatmap parts is a huge benefit in efficiently communicating the condition of the part.

A simple example would be bore distortion. A 2 point or caliper measurement never shows the true shape of a part held by a 3 jaw chuck. A heatmap will show draw, taper, and twist of complex geometries that can't be quantified or visualized in a spreadsheet.

All of this helps improvement in manufacture.

[[Ow...]]

Curve’s added capabilities to best fit, cut, offset, pre-scan filter, create different tolerance bands and remove/filter out unwanted areas is hard to beat no matter what you’re using it for.
Curve is almost a necessity with gears, helical rotors, cams or other like parts with involute, hypocycloid, parabolic type curvatures.
However, my favorite use is unknow contour. I use it extensively for reverse engineering difficult shapes and even will use it to scan small radiuses and their tangent features to then export the data to Cad software for calculating the true size and location.
I haven’t gotten to work with freeform much because 1) I don’t have it anymore (used to several years ago in another world) and 2) I rarely have cad models available to create them.
When I do have a model, I will generally will use 3D curve to evaluate where one would probably use free-form.

[[Ri...]]

Personal opinion.
Zeiss is developing Calypso more and more towards the requirement where Curve and Freeform (or what ever the next cliché name will be) to the point that the software will be mostly useless.
Then they charge not only a large amount of money for the option, you also have to pay an SMA.
Even minimal PCM is nearly gone from Calypso 2020, you cant access the PCM Function tab if you don't have a PCM license.

Its to the point that I either change software or go bare bones Calypso and get cloud software for evaluating data.

[[Je...]]

1. GD&T profile of a line and profile of a surface work best in Calypso when curve and freeform are available. The general surface option is unstable/inadequate when evaluating profile.

2. I use plots connected to curve and freeform features daily to communicate to machinists and engineers about actual geometry on a part.