Auto Cone extracted from a COP

Have you tried creating auto points from the scan and constructing a cone out of that? I usually resort to doing this when the auto features don't work.

I don't understand why it gives a different value when intersecting the auto cone with the plane, but the result from constructing a circle at a certain height might be explained by the fact that the cast point for a constructed cone and an auto cone are not the same! What are your other parameters for the "circle at height" (which point, which vector)?

Have you tried creating auto points from the scan and constructing a cone out of that? I usually resort to doing this when the auto features don't work.

Please go back and re-read paragraphs 2 and 3 of my original post.

I don't understand why it gives a different value when intersecting the auto cone with the plane, but the result from constructing a circle at a certain height might be explained by the fact that the cast point for a constructed cone and an auto cone are not the same! What are your other parameters for the "circle at height" (which point, which vector)?

- Can you elaborate on the cast point for a constructed cone and auto cone are not the same........what do you mean by cast point and why wouldn't they be same?

- I have tried origin, start of cone, end of cone, cone vector, +/- of the axis in which the cone lies etc.

Measure the same cone both as auto cone and as measured cone (or a constructed one),
construct a point (Cast point) from the two cones and compare the Z values,
you will notice a difference - the auto cone has the start end (the surface you clicked) as cast point, the measured (and a constructed) cone has the vertex.
Now construct circle on a certain height from CONE_START on each of them, and you will get different circles.

CONE_VERTEX (if that's the name in English) gives the same result irrespective of how the cone is measured (which is natural, as it is the same cone, with the vertex at the same position).

Measure the same cone both as auto cone and as measured cone (or a constructed one),
construct a point (Cast point) from the two cones and compare the Z values,
you will notice a difference - the auto cone has the start end (the surface you clicked) as cast point, the measured (and a constructed) cone has the vertex.
Now construct circle on a certain height from CONE_START on each of them, and you will get different circles.

CONE_VERTEX (if that's the name in English) gives the same result irrespective of how the cone is measured (which is natural, as it is the same cone, with the vertex at the same position).

Ok, this is all fine and dandy. I understand the cone start and end of the auto cone and the vertex of the constructed cone. Maybe I am not putting the right information into the fields when using the construct a circle via a cone command( I really can't get smart to what is going on with that option ) But I am still confused as to why I would get different results when intersecting the cones with an existing plane, in this case my level plane.

I just again tried intersecting an auto cone with my level plane ( same program as my original post ) and depending on which end of the cone I clicked on, I got different results. One end I got 7.195" and if I clicked on the other end of the cone and intersected with the same plane as above I got the 7.394" again( same result as my original post ). I can live with the 7.195 vs 7.194( from my original post )


Why the two different results? Shouldn't make any difference which end of the cone I click on. To make things even worse, during offline programming, no matter what method I use, the intersect method, or the cone height method, no matter which end I click on, I get the result that I am looking for. Every thing looks good until the operator runs the program on the part and the results are out in left field, like my original post.


I think some thing is majorly screwed up with the auto cone feature when trying to construct circles from them. Every thing else looks good on them when you look at the angle, the cast point, the length etc, etc.....just do not try to construct a circle from them.

Are you sure there's only one cone to click on? Maybe you're hitting two different ones? How do you do the construct cone from individual points - BF or BFRE?

There is only cone. I use best fit. I do not think I have ever used BFRE. Why do you ask? What does that have to do with the problems I am having with auto cone?

Because you wrote " If I take individual auto points and construct a cone, I get the results that I expect.". If that experiment was left in the same program you would have both that cone and the auto cone at the same place, and might click on one or the other.

And BFRE would be the preferred way, to me, of construction when 'changing feature type', in this case using vector points to produce a cone.

You are losing me now Andersi. Clicking on the model to define the auto cone has nothing to do with my constructed cone???? Also, I'm not using vector points. I'm using auto surface points. The auto vector point has always been grayed out. I guess I don't know what the difference is between a vector point and a surface point or what the difference is between BF and BFRE. Isn't BFRE more to do with hard probed hits rather then surface points pulled from a laser scan?

I think we are drifting away from my original question of why does the auto cone feature give me such screwed up results. It shouldn't matter if I am using a constructed cone, or an auto cone. There may be different inputs, but the math should still be the same. I understand that if I construct a cone from a series of points, there is no real start end and stop end like the auto cone, it uses the vertex, but the basic math should still be the same, correct? it shouldn't matter which end of the model I click on, correct?

I measure aluminum castings, I run into a lot of ID and OD measurements. Since I am measuring castings, there is draft( cones ) it would be nice if I could make use of the auto cone feature.