You can use the View | CADVerify menu item to verify that the CAD model is accurate based on the CAD native coordinate system. PC-DMIS displays a CADVerify dialog box that allows you to perform different operations on the CAD model imported into the Graphic Display window. You can easily resize the CADVerify dialog box to a larger size as needed.
You could, if you wanted, load a model, and then load a different model, don't translate either hoping they are in the same reference system in whatever they were drawn in, and then look at the surfaces to ensure they are the same. This is a cheap way of comparing after, say, a rev up.
I'm not sure how PcDmis would know what the model is "supposed" to be versus what the model "is."
If I suspect a model is off, and I don't feel like playing with solidworks (I'm below average with it for manipulating and analyzing, but middling or better at creating a solid), all our mastercam licenses are used (I'm good manipulating and analyzing with it), I will sometimes load a model.
Translate that model where I want it (ABC usually), rotate as necessary and then click auto feature and select what I'm concerned with (usually a hole for me, so I auto cylinder).
Then I can see if my X, Y and Z match the print and if I, J and K are where I expect them.
With my customers (we don't do design, build to print only), many times, I find the model does not match the print.
Not sure of a way to automate that.
Since I have a solidworks license now, by the way, I wouldn't load two models into PcDmis either, Solidworks will compare two models.
Again though, it has no way to know if the either model is drawn correctly to validate anything. It can only say this is not the same as that.
What I'll often do to compare two models (often for a rev change) is to import the new model and merge it with the original model. Then transform them as needed from the CAD Assembly dialog to lay them on top of each other. Then, also from the CAD Assembly dialog, change the colors of one of the models to be very different from the other. Then move the model around to look for differences in the colors. Often, any changes will jump right out. Sometimes it helps to add a bit of transparency to one of the models.
If the measuring routine has vector points in it, you can turn on/off the different models and use the Nominal Points Deviation dialog to check for T-value differences of those points on the model.
PC DMIS allows you to directly import certain style models (if you pay a little bit more).
I have two customers who want us to "Validate" that we are using the correct configuration of their model...we fulfill this requirement for them by NOT saving their model as a "stp file" but instead by directly importing it as a Solidworks or NX file.
About 5 years ago, Direct Cad Interface for NX or Solidworks was a heck of a lot cheaper.
Now that Aerospace & Medical companies are requiring this "configuration management" stuff, Hexagon sensed an opportunity and jacked the price up. And my company was forced to pay it lol!
