Export individual points of a Fitted Plane

[[Mi...]]

As you can see, my Fitted Plane has 73651 points. I would like to export the XYZ points that were used to create this Fitted Plane. I found how to do this for a circle construction, but the same method does not work for elements such as a plane. Is there a way to export the XYZ results of these points?

Edited July 16

[[Ja...]]

Construct-Point-Point 

Hold control and click the flag for your plane. This will create a point in the center of your plane and you can get the coordinates for that point.

 

You could also created 3 random points on that plane and get the coordinates of those points to recreate the plane somewhere else.

[[Mi...]]

Thanks for the reply,

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.

But I actually am looking to create an output file for every single one of the 73,651 points so that I can see their XYZ coordinates.

[[Je...]]

Hey Mike,

based on the points used for the fitting, you can use a 'Smoothed Surface from Mesh' to get hold of the points and its coordinates.

1. Just restore the point selection of the fitting plane by RMB on the element or element name label.
2. Then construct the 'Smoothed Surface from Mesh', please set the parameter 'Smoothing degree' to 'No modification'.
3. The resulting surface can be exported as PLY or STL. Both file formats contain all point coordinates as ASCII. (I personally prefer PLY because of the easy-to-use file structure)

Hope this helps!

[[Mi...]]

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This works. Thank you!

[[Mi...]]

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I discovered that I am also able to export using Export->Geometry->ASCII. This provides with me an .asc file containing X,Y,Z values, and the normal vectors if I so desire. I have a few additional questions:

1) The normal vectors that I mentioned above appear to be the ACTUAL normal vectors. Can you explain how these are obtained? 

2) Is it possible to obtain the NOMINAL normal vectors and write them to a file for a specified 'restore point selection'?

3) After exporting as an ASCII file and checking the boxes for exporting deviations, I don't see any additional information about the deviations in my .asc file. It is just the XYZ coordinates. I looked over the Tech-Guide, it sounds like I may need to do some sort of additional surface comparison or inspection. Can you please explain how I can deviations to be written to a file for a specified 'restore point selection'?

[[Mi...]]

I think I've figured out an answer to number 3. Instead of 'Smoothed Surface from Mesh', I instead performed a 'Surface Comparison on Actual' using the same 'restore point selection'. I then used Export>Geometry>ASCII and obtained my deviations.

I'm now seeing if I can use the actual deviations and some math/trig to backtrack and obtain nominal values.

[[Je...]]

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These are very detailed questions. Could you briefly describe in advance what you are trying to achieve with each step?
It is often the case that you can achieve the same thing with a given but possibly unknown software feature/functionality.

[[Mi...]]

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I absolutely can! I understand that these are uncommon and unusual questions. In the most simple terms, I am hoping to obtain both the Nominal and Actual XYZ-coordinates and the ijk normal vector components for a given mesh selection.

The reason I would like to obtain the information mentioned above is because we are doing a sort of software validation and evaluation of the raw data points. Before we use a software for inspection purposes, we like to do a kind of independent evaluation where we export raw data points out to an excel file or into a CAD software like Siemens NX. To the best of our abilities (and with certain assumptions), we then use these software like Excel or NX to calculate things like projected distances, angles, straightness, perpendicularity, surface profile condition, etc.. and see how well they match the Zeiss Inspect results. It's a bit of an annoying process, but is also helping to re-enforce our understanding of geometry and GD&T.

Back to my original questions:

1) I think I've found my answer after reading the Tech-Guide on Surface Comparison On Actual.

2) The Nominal XYZ and ijk for a given mesh selection is what I am after. I am hoping that the software has some way of exporting these values to a file.

3) This is pretty much the same as question 2. I was able to use the Actual XYZ and ijk to obtain what I'm fairly certain is my Nominal XYZ, but I'm struggling to obtain the Nominal ijk.

 

Thanks.

Edited July 26

[[Mi...]]

You know, it's been a long week and I think I've been way over-thinking this. It seems I've had my normal nominal vector staring me in the face this whole time. 😓 

The ijk vector can be found from the xyz deviations.

 

I apologize for how complicated this has become and for my craziness. Maybe you can just confirm this for me instead - to obtain actual and nominal XYZ coordinates and ijk vectors from a Restore Point Selection, the process is as follows:

1) Perform the Restore Point Selection for the mesh data you would like to inspect and then construct a Surface Comparison on CAD.

2) Export your Surface Comparison on CAD selection using Export>Geometry>ASCII (making sure to also export all deviations). This file will contain the actual XYZ coordinates, the actual ijk vectors, and the actual deviations of the surface points from nominal.

3) After getting the file contents into Excel, simply subtract the corresponding deviation from the XYZ coordinate to find the nominal XYZ coordinates, and simply divide the x_deviation / total_deviation, y_dev/total_dev, and z_dev/total_dev to find the nominal ijk vector.