Base Alignment Questions

[[Me...]]

Hello,
Am I able to use one feature to locate another before the base alignment is completed?

For example a large face with a short diameter? Use the origin of the large face to move in a certain distance from that face to grab a short diameter.

or a tube with a small wall thickness? Use the large diameter of the tube to grab the small sliver of a face for the origin.

or use both? Have a large diameter and face but with a small crosshole for planar rotation.

I have attached some examples.

document.pdf

[[De...]]

Sure, just use pcm to locate the feature from the feature you need.

Lets say we have a tall thin wall tube with a narrow face at the top, you could..

Create a circle called circle1 a small amount down from the end of the tube give it a decent amount of retract distance.

The retract distance will allow for some loading error.

Now create a plane called Plane1 , and for the measurement strategy create a circle path.

For the location of the circle path, in the X location right click and choose formula.

Then make the formula be getActual("Circle1").x

in the Y location right click and choose formula.

Then make the formula be getActual("Circle1").y

If the circle diameter has a lot of tolerance you could even make the diameter of the circle path a formula and use

getActual("Circle1").diameter - 0.010

so that your path scans .005 in from the edge.

Now since calypso sees the PCM in the scan path requiring data from circle1 it will run circle 1 before running the place


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Assuming a plane with a short diameter right below it in the same orientation of the above example..

You could first measure the Plane, then use PCM for the location of the circle to measure.

So in the Z value of the circle you could right click, choose formula and put in getActual("Plane1").z - 0.050 to make the circle be .050 below the Plane1

[[Ow...]]

Not exactly sure I understand which scenario you're wanting to do but, attached is a pic showing how to use a formula (you don't need PCM) to measure the face of a tube based on thickness.

Basically, measure the OD, measure the ID, measure the top face with a plane and open up the strategy and select circle on plane.
Then in the circle diameter, right click and select formula. Chose the actual of the OD, type in a - and chose the actual of the ID, then put parenthesis before and after the formula you just created and then at the end, put a backslash to divide the result of the formula in half and then add a + and select the ID. This puts the circle exactly in the middle of the face width.

[[Ow...]]

Looks like Derek beat me to the answer, only he has PCM and I don't ...lol

[[De...]]

Whether you have PCM or not it still works the same way. I call it PCM only because its just using PCM variables but you don't actually need the PCM option for it to work.

Your method is actually finding the center of the thin wall, mine I use a lot to do base alignments so I just am using the circle to align to the tube prior to running the circle path on the plane - then my plane is scanned in the correct position even though the part might be loaded slightly off from the last one.