At my workplace, the CMM operators rarely, if ever, see the main PCDMIS interface. I developed a method which supplies a .Net front end application which is connected to PCDMIS running in a background process (PCDLRN). The operator interacts with the .Net application to identify the part being measured and provides a few other pieces of data which varies depending on the part. Everything that the operator may need to do with respect to the CMM and the measurement process is available through the .Net application. For example, most applications have buttons when pressed by the operator will;
- Start a tip qualification or validation.
- Pop up a PDF work instruction document.
- Start a parametric part measurement
- Display a measurement report (pdf or excel file document).
The application interacts with the PCDLRN in real time. By that I mean both the application and the PCDLRN process are running at the same time. For example, the applications knows when the CMM measurement process is completed. While the CMM is performing a measurement cycle the application receives the measurement result of each Dimension feature immediately after its execution on the CMM and processes it while the CMM continues on to the next feature. I usually have the quality dept create the measurement report in MS Excel, then using it as a template, I populate it via .Net with the measurements as they arrive from the CMM.
On the PCDMIS programming side, I have a simple process in which a single part PCDMIS program is converted into a parametric part program. Because of the .Net application, the PCDMIS program has only one task which is to measure the part. There is no code in the PCDMIS program to open, close, read and write to files and no code to interact with operator. This makes the PCDMIS code simple to create, fix and otherwise maintain.
Back to my starting point, I haven't really touched upon all that this method is capable of, but is there any interest in this? do other sites have frequent measurement of parametric parts? What would be the right vehicle to share this stuff if there is an interest?
