Hey I am new to Pc-dmis for the Vision

Hi Curt, if you are doing your alignment using touch probe, and measuring with the video probe, you need to ensure your touch and video probe tips are cross probe calibrated to each other. To do this you will need a ring gage. From Probe Utilities, select the contact probe, and press the Measure button to calibrate the ring. Once you've calibrated the touch probe, select the video probe, and select the Calibrate Probe Offset option. Press Calibrate, and answer "no" when asked if the tool has moved. The two probes should now be aligned.
For alignment, you have a number of options. The simplest is a 3-2-1 alignment. Using your touch probe, measure three surface points on the surface (for levelling), then measure a feature (e.g. a line) for rotation, and then measure a feature for origin (or you can construct this if you wish).
You can also use the 2d option on the alignment wizard (on the wizards toolbar), but this is geared more for pure vision measurement.

For the white light sensor, you need version V4.2. On this version, you will be able to make a surface point (focus) and do a UV scan. The laser support is being extended in V4.3.

As you're comfortable with the touch probe side, I'd recommend running the "vision tutorial" that comes with the software to help get a grip on the video side.

Hey Curt, I dont have the white light scanner but I have a Mycrona w/ TTP and a camera. Like nKay said you always have to be sure that your probe offset between your camera and TTP is correct. However, on my machine the camera is the primary probe and my offset calibration sequence is as follows; select the camera> calibrate offset> answer YES to has the tool moved>select TTP>select ring gage for tool>answer NO to has the tool moved(if the TTP completely misses the ring select MAN+DCC prior to measuring ring gage. It is helpful to set your prehit in your probe utilities options to a larger number, say 4mm) Additionally, w/ the camera as the primary probe its nominals should be whole numbers(in my case 0,0,78) If this number gets corrupted every other offset will have to be reestablished. Alignments are the most critical piece of the PCDMIN puzzle and you will need to master this. Assigments are used to assign values to variables and will allow you to do anything the software doesnt have already built into it. Vision metrology requires that the part is clean, free of burrs and that the feature to be measured is normal to the camera focal plane. I hope this helps but this is just the tip of the iceburg. Be sure to visit this site often as it will be of immeasurable help.