Mesh License?

I am also leaning towards PolyWorks for the laser scanning abilities, but Inspire also looks very capable. For portable, PC-DMIS might not be the best option. I have nothing to compare with at the moment though.

At the risk of being banned... And clearly stating that I have almost no experience using the Demon for scanning (the boss hates it based on decade old information and no actual usage experience )

But alas, we have been using PolyWorks with blended touch trigger and scanning routines and it works quite well for simple datum structures. We hard probe the datums and then scan the bulk of the part. We have found that for complicated datums it can fall short, the more rigid structure of PCDMIS will help out a great deal.

We asked the Hexagon salesman for a trial of Inspire when he was onsite, but never heard anything back. That lack of follow up did contribute to us purchasing another seat of PolyWorks. 

I am trying to, against orders, we have thousands of programs already written for PC-DMIS. Currently I am measuring things with the normal arm program, then adding the COP at the end saved in two different files. The lack of a working mesh license is now keeping my hands tied from pushing back.
And my boss's hatred for anything being scanned with the Demon. 

Does exporting it as XYZ translate well into solidworks for an overlay? I might try that the next time I do a Laser Scan. I didn't think it would be as detailed as exporting the scan as a CAD model.

I think (heavy on 'think') that IGES includes vector information for each point where XYZ does not.  That is the only reason I can come up with for the vast size difference between the files.  Next time, export it as both and let the solidworks people compare them for ease of use and so forth.

Yes, IGES is a horrible format, XYZ is probably the best for point clouds.  For Mesh data I would go with stl.  As for CAD models, if you mean exporting the PC-DMIS .CAD as a different format, then it would have to be STEP because we don't offer an IGES export.  If you mean exporting the features as a CAD model, again, step would probably be the best option.  I'd recommend excluding the COP / Mesh from the feature export though because, as you've found, they will create a huge file that's difficult to work with.  It's much better to handle the features and cop/mesh separately.

What they are wanting is the scan data from the laser so they can create their own heatmap / colormap and see how much overall the part is off from the model in hotspots we may have any issues with. Would XYZ be sufficient for this?

I export my point clouds to XYZ and use them in various other software. Works beautifully.

Sounds kinda like what PolyWorks Viewer does TBH. 

Does Inspire offer a way for an engineer to view the scan/model without a license and take basic measurements?

Neil Challinor 

Is "PC-DMIS Portable" something completely different than PC-DMIS CAD++? Is portable more directed towards arms/trackers and thus more "useable"?
I am starting to believe that we are running PC-DMIS for CMM but with an arm...

vpt.se  it's the same PC-DMIS but there should be noticeable differences when running a portable environment.  You need to check your environment configurator settings & available license options.  The most noticeable difference from the UI perspective would be the lack of any DCC commands and the large toolbars/status bar.  Depending on which portable device you are using, there will also be certain specialised toolbars available.

Thanks! The DCC options are gone and I do have the large toolbar, so I guess we are running portable.

Let's say I have a COP with CAD where I have "islands" of irregular shape that I want to create an extracted surface (either one large or several small ones). I know I can do this with the selection tool, but is it possible to create surfaces by selecting the CAD surface and PC-DMIS then creates the surface using points from the COP?

Thanks! The DCC options are gone and I do have the large toolbar, so I guess we are running portable.

Let's say I have a COP with CAD where I have "islands" of irregular shape that I want to create an extracted surface (either one large or several small ones). I know I can do this with the selection tool, but is it possible to create surfaces by selecting the CAD surface and PC-DMIS then creates the surface using points from the COP?

Yes - see: PC-DMIS Help Center - 2024.1 (hexagonmi.com)

Thanks Neil, the link loads indefinitely for me, both in Edge and Chrome. I'll see if I can search for it manually.

Try this one: Constructing an Extracted Surface (zoominsoftware.io)

Worked just fine, thanks!