I want to take a lot of points on a planar surface and then level to a plane made up of those points. The computer is down a flight of stairs and I would be upstairs inside a machine canvassing an area about 12' across. Using version 2011. No CAD. Not using T-Probe, just reflectors. I'll turn the probecomp off to keep it simple. I have me, myself, and I helping, so I don't want to do things in a way that has going up and down stairs a whole bunch of times to click on the screen. I don't have a remote either. In the middle, about halfway inbetween the large planar surface I am measuring, I have a break in my line of sight to the instrument. So I was thinking I could do two separate fixed distance scans, to collect all the hits I want to end up in my plane. Then, if I do that, how do I construct "one" plane out of both scans? My newbie ways would have me just taking a bunch of individual points and constructing a plane after I was done, if I could take hits near enough to the computer so I could hit enter after every point. But because it's downstairs, I want to take a bunch of points without having to reach the computer after each hit. I am almost brand new to a laser tracker. I am normally a DCC guy when it comes to pc-dmis. I figured I would use .200" for my fixed distance. So I tried to do that, and now I have two scans as my first two features in my edit window, and trying to construct the plane I want isn't working either. Can scan data be used to make a plane? What is the right way to this?
You can take individual points by turning on the stable probing function. Once the laser senses that the reflector is still, it will take the measurement (CNTRL-H) and go on to the next feature in your program. If your tracker is set up with power lock, the laser will find the reflector once you pass behind the line of sight blockage.
You should be able to construct a feature set out of your scans.
Thanks Ed for the reply. I considered what you said but I hesitate to use it because I am talking about hundreds to a thousand points. The moving and holding it still, moving then holding it still, over and over is not really what I am looking for. And, it sounds like I have to prep the features ahead of time before probing, and would require a additional discipline to "target" the correct places to hold still, in order to have a roughly uniform distribution of points. The fixed distance scan is really appealing and seems to be just what I want, except, I don't know if it will let me construct a plane later with the hit points. I do have power lock. I wonder if power lock will work in the middle of a single scan?
So, I guess what I need to know is, does PC-DMIS allow me to construct a plane from the hits in a scan? Or can I probe a "fixed-distance" plane, similar to the way a "fixed-distance" scan behaves when probing. If not, I may have to learn an alternative software available to me.
There should be a function on the probe toolbar called "point-only mode". This will take the points without the need for clicking on the finish button. Or you can always turn off the "press end key" in the setup menu.
I'm not a tracker user, but I can confirm that you can Construct a Plane of type Best-Fit with your scan as the source.
Alternately, you could do both of your scans, walk back to the computer, F9-edit them, use the "To Point" button to transmute them into vector points, and then Construct one giant plane that is Best Fit to the huge body of points. (hopefully you've used the Group Command to hide them in the Edit Window)
I'm surprised that you can't make a Plane that is Best Fit to both scans at once.....
Has anyone ever seen a 613 error message in mscon before? It is happening during initialization and doesn't provide any kind of description as to what it is. If you have any input or help it would be greatly appreciated. We are using the Leica 901LR.
I am not totally familiar with that error but you may want to get some good training on that machine. There are things you need to know when moving it, to calibrations, and settings in emscon. If you can get it I would.
