FREE FORM SURFACE????

[[Ry...]]

Hello Fellow Metrologists!

I have been tasked by my manager to figure out the versatility, usability, use cases & overall need for if we should purchase a freeform surface software license from zeiss or not. Our parent company owns multiple plants & sometimes tasks other plants with work if we are swamped. A program has been written by another plant & was sent to me which includes features & characteristics that use the free form surface feature & our company cannot evaluate these features since we don't have the software add on.

So my question is.. is getting this software add on going to be beneficial for us? How often would free form surface be used? How much would this run us?

My manager's concern is that we are going to waste a lot of money on something that we are going to use very seldom. If you have free form surface, how do you use it? Is it something you use often?

Thanks,
Ryan

[[Ow...]]

Quick reply that will give somebody a chance to prove me wrong but, without cad-models Free-Form is useless?
So, if you work with a lot of cad-models and organic non-parametric surfaces, free-form is pretty much necessary.
Do you have curve?
Curve is priceless in my opinion and I believe curve and free-form come together as one package now(?).
Last time I bought curve (2014) it didn't come with free-form.

[[Ev...]]

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Depends on what you're running. I'm in medical and everything is controlled by non-parametric profiles so freeform is a must have. You need CAD models to make freeform work though. I think freeform should be standard with a basic calypso license, instead you have to pay up...

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Curve and freeform come bundled together now, we just purchased it for two of our machines.

[[Er...]]

I also agree with Owen. Assuming you are scanning surfaces, curve software upgrade is priceless. It's great for profiles, but even if you don't use a lot of profile, you can scan continuously and extract the points into other features which saves a bunch of run time. In my opinion, they should always include free form and curve with the standard software package price and only remove at the customers request. You don't know what you're missing until you actually have it and learn to use it.

Just to give an idea of time savings here is some data that I collected for before/after running time using Curve/Free Form:

Program Before After
A 22.26 min. 13.58 min.
B 21.70 min. 7.88 min.
C 4.00 min. 2.50 min.

[[To...]]

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I believe you can still buy them separately for people who already have one or the other.

[[Ro...]]

My bosses talk to industry big wigs in the aerospace (read outerspace) industry, and going forward a lot of the drawings are going to be profile only from CAD.
Currently a lot of the drawings i receive are what's known as "Limited Dimension" drawings and there is a note in the corner that says something to the tune of "CAD model is the master, any undimensioned surfaces are to be within +/- X.XX from CAD" so i go around and do all the stated true positions and a couple overall distances, and the rest of the part, any surface that i havent used gets a Plane, Line, Cylinder applied and i group all those features into a free form surface (Recall Points) and do an "All over" profile of my part.
So depending on your industry, you may need Free form.

I do however understand where your bosses are coming from, because PCD doesn't charge extra for scanning profiles, its a basic part of their program. Surface Profile, Line Profile, both included. Calypso charges extra for Free Form and Curve, and has separate training for both.

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[[SH...]]

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One of the reason I understand that it is doesn't bundles with Calypso, Zeiss application engineer's have targets related software sales.. if it is alone with Calypso ( sales engineer will get the credit)obviously application will object it...

[[Ke...]]

Things to consider:
- You already were given a program that requires it - reach out to your sister company (companies) that you need to do measurements for, and ask what is the percentage of the programs they use Freeform Surface
- As was mentioned, Curve & Freeform are bundled now... I use Curve much more frequently than Freeform. If you do not have Curve already, you *definitely* want it
- Once you are trained on how to use Freeform (and/or Curve) you will find more uses for it (them) than the totality of comments on the forum will suggest
- there are many workarounds to *not* using Freeform (or Curve) that can be *very* time consuming... how much is your time worth to you, and The Company?
- If you decide to wait until a later date when you *really* need it... *then* you still need to schedule and take the training (sooner is better than later, imo)
- Finally: How many ??? are really necessary to ask a simple question on a forum 🤣

[[Mi...]]

So what was your cost to get curve and free form ❓

[[Je...]]

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.

Among all of your relevant points here, Keith, I resonate with this one. At a previous job where we were not granted curve and freeform, I spent a ton of time banging my head on the granite trying to figure out workarounds to mimic curve and freeform.

It was like hearing, "we don't really need that new-fangled color television" but being required to decipher colors from a greyscale image.
.

[[Ri...]]

If you have complex shapes that require surface profile, you need free-form surface.

If you have multiple surfaces that require a best fit evaluation, you need free-form surface.

You always need Curve - I will die on this hill. 😃

Work arounds are not fun, can be completely time consuming, and are not always correct.