What's the easiest way to have a flip in a program? The only way I've been able to do it was to have 2 separate programs and then merge them together. I have found its hard to edit the program offline when they are merged together.
Paste with pattern is the easiest way to flip a feature or pattern of features within a routine. If you need to mirror the whole routine, then this can also be done but you would need to create one routine first (say the LH part), save and close, then, from the home page, go to FILE>OPERATIONS>MIRROR
STEWY When I flip the part over to measure the backside I put in a message to flip the part over to pause the program. I import the same model but transformed to the position I want. Then do a manual alignment followed by DCC alignment just like you would do on the on a part. HTH
you've got two different answers above, because folks interpret "flip in a program" differently...
flip the physical part over on the granite
--or--
flip/mirror the routine code to duplicate your programming efforts for the opposing side of a (symmetrical) part
--or--
a third interpretation, flip the entire routine and have the option to use one routine to measure left-sided component vs a right-sided component.
if you clarify what you mean, you can get a more accurate answer.
If you need to dimension features measured on one side of the part relative to features on the other side of the part, you will need to do an Equate alignment.
However, based on the phrasing of your question, I'm guessing that isn't important for your application. It sounds more like you want to have two separate programs run back to back and are looking for a way to avoid having two separate reports and a lot of opening and closing of programs. In that case, here is the easiest way I can think to do that.
Go to the very end of the first measuring routine and recall the startup alignment. That sort of rests the coordinates as if you are starting a measuring routine from scratch - Online, it will put the CMM in machine coordinates.
Insert an operator comment to instruct the operator to flip the part.
Then, open the 2nd measuring routine, the one you want to tack onto the end of the original measuring routine, select all the code after the initial startup alignment (Basically, select the entire program). Then, copy the code with Ctrl+C (or however you prefer to copy stuff). (Handy tip: if you press Ctrl+Shift+End, it will automatically select all the code between the current cursor position and the end of the measuring routine)
Go back to the first measuring routine and go to Edit -> Pattern, to open the paste with pattern settings. Adjust the settings to do one copy with no shift, no rotation, no mirror. The idea is that you won't want to change the positions or orientations of features at all, you just want to make sure that features will have a unique feature ID. Then, click ok to close that dialog window.
Put your cursor on the very last line of the first measuring routine, right after the operator comment saying to flip the part. Then, go to Edit -> Paste with Pattern. This will copy over the entire second measuring routine. Doing a 'Paste with Pattern' instead of a normal Paste operation will ensure that no two features will have the same name (feature ID). If any features from second measuring routine have the same feature ID as a feature in the first measuring routine, they will be given a new unique ID during the paste with pattern operation.
The last, optional, step is to go through the newly pasted code and adjust the names of features as needed. Maybe the dimension ID names will need to be adjusted or something like that. If you find yourself doing this often you will learn little tricks to make the automatically assigned feature IDs work more to your liking, but that is outside of the scope of "easiest".
STEWY Check your alignment. Something might be messing you up. When you run the part with seperate programs do you get the same measurement (heights)? Try creating a seperate program with just the alignment and the height. Just to check. HTH
