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?
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.
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.
