One point Alignment using CAD

Sorry to be a pain Matthew, but when you say, "Set XYZ origins and offests", what exactly am I setting/offsetting to?

Lets say you are using a fixture ("You are using a fixture") and you know that the front-left corner of the fixture is X1200, Y-250, Z75 to part cad position. Directions would state, "Place probe 1mm above front-left corner of the fixture, hit DONE" (this is for a read point). Pcdmis will record, as a point, the location of the probe when the DONE button is pressed and it is then an XYZ FEATURE (point). You then align to the point, setting the XYZ origins to it. IF your fixture sits X+ to X+, Y+ to Y+, Z+ to Z+, then all you need to do is use the point as XYZ origin, then origin_offset wach axis, X-1200, Y250, Z-75, and you are ROUGHLY aligned. Close enough for the CMM to go into DCC mode and measure features on the fixture. I would start with points CLOSE to the corner to get a better rough alignment, do 3 points on the top, 2 on the front, one on the side, then construct a plane & a line. Level & origin to the plane, rotate & origin to the line, origin to the last point. THEN, now that you are roughly aligned to the actual fixture, measure whatever on the fixture you need to align it, be it 3 widly spaced tooling balls, or 4 corners and the entire side and a second side, or whatever. Could ya follow this? Start small, (single read point), go a little bigger (align on the corner where the read point was), then go HUGE (cover as much area as you can) for the final alignment.

Sorry to be a pain Matthew, but when you say, "Set XYZ origins and offests", what exactly am I setting/offsetting to?

Lets say you are using a fixture ("You are using a fixture") and you know that the front-left corner of the fixture is X1200, Y-250, Z75 to part cad position. Directions would state, "Place probe 1mm above front-left corner of the fixture, hit DONE" (this is for a read point). Pcdmis will record, as a point, the location of the probe when the DONE button is pressed and it is then an XYZ FEATURE (point). You then align to the point, setting the XYZ origins to it. IF your fixture sits X+ to X+, Y+ to Y+, Z+ to Z+, then all you need to do is use the point as XYZ origin, then origin_offset wach axis, X-1200, Y250, Z-75, and you are ROUGHLY aligned. Close enough for the CMM to go into DCC mode and measure features on the fixture. I would start with points CLOSE to the corner to get a better rough alignment, do 3 points on the top, 2 on the front, one on the side, then construct a plane & a line. Level & origin to the plane, rotate & origin to the line, origin to the last point. THEN, now that you are roughly aligned to the actual fixture, measure whatever on the fixture you need to align it, be it 3 widly spaced tooling balls, or 4 corners and the entire side and a second side, or whatever. Could ya follow this? Start small, (single read point), go a little bigger (align on the corner where the read point was), then go HUGE (cover as much area as you can) for the final alignment.