External Alignment

They can only be read by PC-Dmis. However, if you create a new PC-Dmis routine with just the STARTUP alignment active, you should be able to determine where the external alignment's origin is, along with what it's primary, secondary and tertiary axes are. This is the code you would need...

RECALL/ALIGNMENT,INTERNAL,STARTUP
ASSIGN/V5= external alignment name.ORIGIN
ASSIGN/V6= external alignment name.XAXIS
ASSIGN/V7= external alignment name.YAXIS
ASSIGN/V8= external alignment name.ZAXIS

External alignments are created and saved from measuring routines. It essentially saves the position and orientation of an alignment relative to a the machine's coordinates. Even if you have two machines that are the same size and model there will be slight differences between each machine. The home position will be slightly different relative to the table. So, you will want to save the alignments for each machine separately.

Alignment files (.aln) are not text based, so you can't edit them directly. In your case, what you would want to do is find out what measuring routine created the aliments you need to recall on the new machine. Then, run those routines on the new CMM to generate new alignment files for that new specific machine. Make sure you set up the search path for your Recall Directory to be different for different machines. That way, each CMM will have it's own recall directory and won't be overwriting the alignment files for other CMMs.

Hello there.

I wonder how to change the external alignment path?
Thanks

When you start up PCDmis, go to Edit-> set search path->Recall Directory

When you start up PCDmis, go to Edit-> set search path->Recall Directory

Thank you so much. I took over from retired senior. And never cared about those default paths or folders before.