I have a looping question

Where to start…. I have been programming for about a year. I am not too much of a noob but I do not have any one to really turn too and ask for help (besides you guys and gals). So I have been playing around with my cmm, making a program then making a loop program out of that…. Now I have ran into problems doing this.

-first problem is If I stop the program in the middle of the loop, pcdmis thinks that the current piece whether it be 2,3,4,5,6 is the first piece to start on. I noticed that the actual coordinates on features are off and stuck. Why is that?

-after avoiding that, my Theo’s keep changing on me. I do not have CAD models so I have to change my Theo’s manually. After running the program they always keep changing. Any way to stop that?

-I guess I am just asking someone to take a look over what I have, I need some senior programmers to teach this young buck some knowledge please here is a picture of my set-up and some code … any advice will help and I am not afraid to take criticism

p.s. I left my manual alignment to show y’all how its changing up on me.

=ALIGNMENT/START,RECALL:USE_PART_SETUP,LIST=YES
            ALIGNMENT/END
            MODE/MANUAL
            MOVESPEED/ 100
            FORMAT/TEXT,OPTIONS, ,HEADINGS,SYMBOLS, ;NOM,TOL,MEAS,DEV,OUTTOL, , 
            LOADPROBE/LLDAWG_TIP1 2X30 TIP2 3X50
            TIP/TIP1, SHANKIJK=0, 0, 1, ANGLE=0
         
MAN_PLNA   =FEAT/PLANE,CARTESIAN,TRIANGLE
            THEO/<10.39954,-0.91716,-27.00211>,<0,0,1>
            ACTL/<10.29746,-0.85066,-27.00047>,<0.0000813,-0.0034436,0.9999941>
            MEAS/PLANE,4
            HIT/BASIC,NORMAL,<2.24446,-0.9518,-26.99909>,<0.0002452,0.0062019,0.9999807>,<2.89135,-0.58091,-27.00009>,USE THEO=YES
            HIT/BASIC,NORMAL,<10.61085,-1.27203,-27.00125>,<0.0002452,0.0062019,0.9999807>,<18.65044,-0.42268,-26.99876>,USE THEO=YES
            HIT/BASIC,NORMAL,<16.79155,-0.97871,-27.00204>,<0.0002452,0.0062019,0.9999807>,<13.03635,-1.1995,-27.00427>,USE THEO=YES
            HIT/BASIC,NORMAL,<11.95131,-0.46609,-27.00607>,<0.0002452,0.0062019,0.9999807>,<6.6117,-1.19955,-26.99876>,USE THEO=YES
            ENDMEAS/
$$ NO,
            
A1         =ALIGNMENT/START,RECALL:STARTUP,LIST=YES
            ALIGNMENT/LEVEL,ZPLUS,MAN_PLNA
            ALIGNMENT/END
            COMMENT/OPER,NO,FULL SCREEN=NO,AUTO-CONTINUE=NO,
            ALIGNMENT
            MAKE LINE ON Y-MINUS/FRONT
$$ NO,
            
MAN_LINEB  =FEAT/LINE,CARTESIAN,UNBOUNDED
            THEO/<2.95008,-1.28824,-27.17141>,<1,0.0000004,0>
            ACTL/<2.24178,-1.54568,-27.14377>,<0.9999997,-0.0008179,0>
            MEAS/LINE,2,ZPLUS
            HIT/BASIC,NORMAL,<2.95008,-1.28824,-27.17326>,<-0.0008712,-0.9999996,0>,<2.24178,-1.54568,-27.14469>,USE THEO=YES
            HIT/BASIC,NORMAL,<18.51021,-1.3018,-27.16955>,<-0.0008712,-0.9999996,0>,<19.00739,-1.55939,-27.14285>,USE THEO=YES
            ENDMEAS/
$$ NO,
            
A2         =ALIGNMENT/START,RECALL:A1,LIST=YES
            ALIGNMENT/ROTATE,XPLUS,TO,MAN_LINEB,ABOUT,ZPLUS
            ALIGNMENT/END
MAN_PNTC   =FEAT/POINT,CARTESIAN
            THEO/<1.99161,-0.72581,-27.07116>,<-1,0.0000022,0>
            ACTL/<1.98758,-1.25369,-27.14727>,<-0.9999969,0.0009674,0.0022823>
            MEAS/POINT,1,WORKPLANE
            HIT/BASIC,NORMAL,<1.99161,-0.72581,-27.07116>,<-1,0.0000022,0>,<1.98758,-1.25369,-27.14727>,USE THEO=YES
            ENDMEAS/
$$ NO,
            
A3         =ALIGNMENT/START,RECALL:A2,LIST=YES
            ALIGNMENT/TRANS,ZAXIS,MAN_PLNA
            ALIGNMENT/TRANS,YAXIS,MAN_LINEB
            ALIGNMENT/TRANS,XAXIS,MAN_PNTC
            ALIGNMENT/END
$$ NO,
            
$$ NO,
            
C1         =COMMENT/INPUT,NO,FULL SCREEN=NO,
            what serial number is this?
$$ NO,
            
            ASSIGN/VCOUNT=0+C1.INPUT
$$ NO,
            
            MODE/DCC
$$ NO,
            
$$ NO,
            
$$ NO,
            
$$ NO,
            
V2         =LOOP/START,ID=YES,NUMBER=3,START=1,SKIP=,
              OFFSET:XAXIS=0,YAXIS=18.25,ZAXIS=5,ANGLE=0
V1         =LOOP/START,ID=YES,NUMBER=3,START=1,SKIP=,
              OFFSET:XAXIS=0,YAXIS=6,ZAXIS=0,ANGLE=0
            MODE/DCC
$$ NO,
            
            DISPLAYPRECISION/4
            FASTPROBEMODE/ON
            MOVESPEED/ 300
            PREHIT/0.1
            RETRACT/0.1
            TRACEFIELD/NO_DISPLAY,LIMIT=15 ; P.O. : 
            TRACEFIELD/NO_DISPLAY,LIMIT=25 ; DRAWING NUMBER : 
            TRACEFIELD/NO_DISPLAY,LIMIT=15 ; INSPECTOR : 
            TRACEFIELD/NO_DISPLAY,LIMIT=15 ; JOB NUMBER : 
            TRACEFIELD/NO_DISPLAY,LIMIT=15 ; HEAT NUMBER : 
            TRACEFIELD/NO_DISPLAY,LIMIT=15 ; VIN NUMBER : 
            TRACEFIELD/NO_DISPLAY,LIMIT=15 ; CUSTOMER : 
            TRACEFIELD/NO_DISPLAY,LIMIT=15 ; SERIAL NUMBER : VCOUNT
            MOVE/POINT,NORMAL,<-0.1515,0.5576,0.3125>
$$ NO,
            
PLNA       =FEAT/PLANE,CARTESIAN,TRIANGLE
            THEO/<8.4562,0.6582,0.0018>,<-0.0003726,0.0020609,0.9999978>
            ACTL/<8.4563,0.6577,-0.0255>,<-0.0003947,0.0122227,0.9999252>
            MEAS/PLANE,6
            HIT/BASIC,NORMAL,<0.1267,0.6388,0.0005>,<-0.0003726,0.0020609,0.9999978>,<0.1268,0.6387,-0.0391>,USE THEO=YES
            HIT/BASIC,NORMAL,<4.7994,1.0227,0.0027>,<-0.0003726,0.0020609,0.9999978>,<4.7995,1.0226,-0.0492>,USE THEO=YES
            HIT/BASIC,NORMAL,<11.7019,1.0676,-0.0009>,<-0.0003726,0.0020609,0.9999978>,<11.702,1.0675,-0.0561>,USE THEO=YES
            HIT/BASIC,NORMAL,<17.7592,0.4945,0.0109>,<-0.0003726,0.0020609,0.9999978>,<17.7593,0.4944,-0.0396>,USE THEO=YES
            HIT/BASIC,NORMAL,<11.9732,0.6058,-0.0022>,<-0.0003726,0.0020609,0.9999978>,<11.9733,0.6057,-0.0538>,USE THEO=YES
            HIT/BASIC,NORMAL,<4.3769,0.1195,0>,<-0.0003726,0.0020609,0.9999978>,<4.377,0.1194,-0.0252>,USE THEO=YES
            ENDMEAS/
            MOVE/POINT,NORMAL,<-0.1431,-0.1238,0.2051>
$$ NO,
            
LINB       =FEAT/LINE,CARTESIAN,UNBOUNDED
            THEO/<0.6638,0.0267,-0.0699>,<1,-0.0000939,0>
            ACTL/<0.6638,0.0318,-0.0697>,<1,0.000208,0>
            MEAS/LINE,2,ZPLUS
            HIT/BASIC,NORMAL,<0.6638,0.0267,-0.0719>,<-0.0000939,-1,0>,<0.6639,0.0318,-0.0717>,USE THEO=YES
            HIT/BASIC,NORMAL,<17.5832,0.0251,-0.0679>,<-0.0000939,-1,0>,<17.5833,0.0353,-0.0677>,USE THEO=YES
            ENDMEAS/
            MOVE/POINT,NORMAL,<-0.2919,-0.3716,-0.0759>
PNTC       =FEAT/POINT,CARTESIAN
            THEO/<-0.0107,0.2214,-0.0721>,<-1,0.0000022,0>
            ACTL/<-0.0107,0.2214,-0.0721>,<-1,0.0000022,0>
            MEAS/POINT,1,WORKPLANE
            HIT/BASIC,NORMAL,<0.0002,0.2213,-0.0723>,<-1,0.0000022,0>,<-0.0107,0.2214,-0.0721>,USE THEO=YES
            ENDMEAS/
$$ NO,
            
            PREHIT/0.06
            RETRACT/0.06
A4         =ALIGNMENT/START,RECALL:A3,LIST=YES
            ALIGNMENT/LEVEL,ZPLUS,PLNA
            ALIGNMENT/ROTATE,XPLUS,TO,LINB,ABOUT,ZPLUS
            ALIGNMENT/TRANS,XAXIS,PNTC
            ALIGNMENT/TRANS,YAXIS,LINB
            ALIGNMENT/TRANS,ZAXIS,PLNA
            ALIGNMENT/END


$$ NO,=====================================================
            
GRP1       =GROUP/SHOWALLPARAMS=NO    HAD TO CONDENSE THIS
            ENDGROUP/ID=GRP1          @@@@@@PROGRAM@@@@@@@     
$$ NO,=====================================================


        

    
C2         =COMMENT/YESNO,NO,FULL SCREEN=NO,AUTO-CONTINUE=YES,TIME DELAY=5,
            KEEP GOING?
$$ NO,
            
            IF_GOTO/C2.INPUT=="NO" ,GOTO = L1
$$ NO,
            
            ASSIGN/VCOUNT=VCOUNT+1
$$ NO,
            [ATTACH=CONFIG]9069[/ATTACH]
            TRACEFIELD/NO_DISPLAY,LIMIT=15 ; SERIAL NUMBER : VCOUNT
            REPORT/LABEL, FILENAME= PPAP ITEM DIMENSION (2) NOT COPY.LBL
$$ NO,
            
L1         =LABEL/
$$ NO,

Attached Files

Parents

Matthew D. Hoedeman over 11 years ago

Thank you Matt. Alot of this makes sense to me. Not the quickest learner. You figure I should get this stuff by now or I ain't gonna get it. I feel like I need to sit here and have someone hold my hand threw the whole thing before I get it. One last question if the rotation distance grows and you are getting form error due to not being leveled to the part and using MCS. Could your targets not be way off as the rotation distance grows? If that makes any sense. I have had a part before where it was like a 10 foot plate with holes in it and my datums were two 1" little machined squares in the corner. Ya the holes on this sheet that were close to the datums were great, but the 2 tenths skew from the start of this hole pattern ended up being way out when you to the other end of that plate.

It will depend on HOW exactly you do the DCC alignment. If you are in doubt of the 'skew' from the rough alignment, do an iterative alignment as it will re-measure all the datums to the DCC measured datums, in other words, the iterative alignment will be a double DCC alignment, with the second one building off the first one.

Iterative alignments are kind of neat in a way. If you give Pcdmis a FIXTURE tolerance other than zero, it will only measure all the features twice since it is smart enough to know that it isn't going to get them any closer, if you give the FIXTURE tolerance a value of zero, then it will re-measure the number of times you have entered for the number of iterations., even though it 'knows' it can't get any better. I leave the number set at 99, I use 0.05mm for the FIXTURE tolerance and 0.5 for the target tolerance as a general rule, and it never measures more than twice. If your datum features are NOT within the FIXTURE tolerance, it will tell you so in a pop-up, but that is just a "warning", after you OK the message, it will measure the part to what it calculated. You will never see this message if you are using the minimum number of datum points since 3-2-1 will always make a plane, line, point for the alignment. If you use 4 or more for the level or 3 or more for the rotate or 2 or more for the origin, expect to see this message when using a tight tolerance.

Iterative alignments are also kind of a nasty pain in a way as well. I've seen this happen ONLY when my features were NOT within the "fixture" tolerance, but if you have a program with an iterative alignment, you run it, save it, close it, and open it again, it WILL re-calculate the alignment AS SOON AS YOU OPEN THE PROGRAM. Of course, if your features are within the fixture tolerance, you don't KNOW that it is doing this, but if they are not, you can open and close and open and close and open and close wand watch the deviations in the pop-up change EACH TIME you open it.

The target tolerance.... well, I've used it as low as 0.1mm (0.004") and not had any warnings for that, ONLY for 'fixture' tolerance, but since 0.5 is the default, I just leave it at that. "FIXTURE" and "TARGET" are just what they appear to be, the FIXTURE tolerance is how close the alignment axis of the feature must be to nominal and the target tolerance is the "TP" radius for the feature, if ya follow.

Yeah, there are times when my 'standard' method (just measure and go) will not work as the best method, but it is up to the programmer to know when and why.

IF in doubt, yeah, go ahead and make all those extra alignments, BUT, if you rotate in an alignment, LEVEL first. If you origin in an alignment, Rotate before you origin and LEVEL before you rotate. Build it like a pyramid, every time, until you have all 6 DOF locked.

OR, use the measured plane as workplane option, this works EXACTLY AS IF you leveled to the plane all by itself in an aligment for measuring 2-D features afterwords.

Now, I would bet that there will be some that say, "Well, if I leveled Z and origined Z in AL1, and when I go to make AL2 it recalls AL1, then I am already leveled and origined, I don't need to do it again." to which I say...... there are a LOT of people that do exactly that and there are quite a few who then come here and whine "My nominals keep changing"..... I've never had noms/theos change in any of my programs except what I want them to change (except, of course, for the BUG in the software when you change your alignment and the "Update to new alignment" window comes up and sometime when you click NO, it does YES and sometimes when you click YES it does NO). But that is another topic....

Of course, this alignment stuff isn't the original topic, but what I was reading forced me to jump in!
Cancel
Vote Up 0 Vote Down

Sign in to reply

Cancel

Reply

Matthew D. Hoedeman over 11 years ago

Thank you Matt. Alot of this makes sense to me. Not the quickest learner. You figure I should get this stuff by now or I ain't gonna get it. I feel like I need to sit here and have someone hold my hand threw the whole thing before I get it. One last question if the rotation distance grows and you are getting form error due to not being leveled to the part and using MCS. Could your targets not be way off as the rotation distance grows? If that makes any sense. I have had a part before where it was like a 10 foot plate with holes in it and my datums were two 1" little machined squares in the corner. Ya the holes on this sheet that were close to the datums were great, but the 2 tenths skew from the start of this hole pattern ended up being way out when you to the other end of that plate.

It will depend on HOW exactly you do the DCC alignment. If you are in doubt of the 'skew' from the rough alignment, do an iterative alignment as it will re-measure all the datums to the DCC measured datums, in other words, the iterative alignment will be a double DCC alignment, with the second one building off the first one.

Iterative alignments are kind of neat in a way. If you give Pcdmis a FIXTURE tolerance other than zero, it will only measure all the features twice since it is smart enough to know that it isn't going to get them any closer, if you give the FIXTURE tolerance a value of zero, then it will re-measure the number of times you have entered for the number of iterations., even though it 'knows' it can't get any better. I leave the number set at 99, I use 0.05mm for the FIXTURE tolerance and 0.5 for the target tolerance as a general rule, and it never measures more than twice. If your datum features are NOT within the FIXTURE tolerance, it will tell you so in a pop-up, but that is just a "warning", after you OK the message, it will measure the part to what it calculated. You will never see this message if you are using the minimum number of datum points since 3-2-1 will always make a plane, line, point for the alignment. If you use 4 or more for the level or 3 or more for the rotate or 2 or more for the origin, expect to see this message when using a tight tolerance.

Iterative alignments are also kind of a nasty pain in a way as well. I've seen this happen ONLY when my features were NOT within the "fixture" tolerance, but if you have a program with an iterative alignment, you run it, save it, close it, and open it again, it WILL re-calculate the alignment AS SOON AS YOU OPEN THE PROGRAM. Of course, if your features are within the fixture tolerance, you don't KNOW that it is doing this, but if they are not, you can open and close and open and close and open and close wand watch the deviations in the pop-up change EACH TIME you open it.

The target tolerance.... well, I've used it as low as 0.1mm (0.004") and not had any warnings for that, ONLY for 'fixture' tolerance, but since 0.5 is the default, I just leave it at that. "FIXTURE" and "TARGET" are just what they appear to be, the FIXTURE tolerance is how close the alignment axis of the feature must be to nominal and the target tolerance is the "TP" radius for the feature, if ya follow.

Yeah, there are times when my 'standard' method (just measure and go) will not work as the best method, but it is up to the programmer to know when and why.

IF in doubt, yeah, go ahead and make all those extra alignments, BUT, if you rotate in an alignment, LEVEL first. If you origin in an alignment, Rotate before you origin and LEVEL before you rotate. Build it like a pyramid, every time, until you have all 6 DOF locked.

OR, use the measured plane as workplane option, this works EXACTLY AS IF you leveled to the plane all by itself in an aligment for measuring 2-D features afterwords.

Now, I would bet that there will be some that say, "Well, if I leveled Z and origined Z in AL1, and when I go to make AL2 it recalls AL1, then I am already leveled and origined, I don't need to do it again." to which I say...... there are a LOT of people that do exactly that and there are quite a few who then come here and whine "My nominals keep changing"..... I've never had noms/theos change in any of my programs except what I want them to change (except, of course, for the BUG in the software when you change your alignment and the "Update to new alignment" window comes up and sometime when you click NO, it does YES and sometimes when you click YES it does NO). But that is another topic....

Of course, this alignment stuff isn't the original topic, but what I was reading forced me to jump in!
Cancel
Vote Up 0 Vote Down

Sign in to reply

Cancel

Children

No Data