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Offline Program with an Online Seat

KamikazeKonrad
I know this isn't news to many currently using the forum, but for those interested in offline programming when all they have is an online seat (dongle's married to a CMM), there was in the past a workaround to programming offline, that may still work for you.

Download and install PCDmis version 3.5 or earlier on a computer you want to offline program from. Locate the file interfac.dll in the install folder and rename it to anything other than interfac.dll. Plug your dongle into the USB port, and you're good to go. You may not be programming in the latest version, but any newer version will open the older versions saves, and furthermore, with a program like UltraVNC, you can remote access the computer you've set up and program from anywhere.

The only issue is that you can't run your CMM while you have the dongle in another computer.
  • More like 50,000 licenses now, with probably less than 10% offline. It's more complicated than you give it credit, and certainly it most likely has to do with offline licenses. If you guys think offline licenses should be free, come do some programming for me for a few months, I can't pay you for your work though, but you like it and would do it anyways right? I've got some great ideas that just need programming. Slight smile
  • More like 50,000 licenses now, with probably less than 10% offline. It's more complicated than you give it credit, and certainly it most likely has to do with offline licenses. If you guys think offline licenses should be free, come do some programming for me for a few months, I can't pay you for your work though, but you like it and would do it anyways right? I've got some great ideas that just need programming. Slight smile
    NO one is saying that an offline license should be free, what they ARE saying is that the seat we have purchased for the CMM it is on SHOULD also work with the controller OFF/broken/etc.
  • We have the same air problem here.They dont want to run compressors $$$$ just for the CMM if its not moving. I work off hours in "offline" mode and then get the air error. Frustrating . I agree it would be nice if you had the choice to continue in offline mode and ignore error.

    just my 2 cents.
  • NO one is saying that an offline license should be free, what they ARE saying is that the seat we have purchased for the CMM it is on SHOULD also work with the controller OFF/broken/etc.

    Correctamundo.

    come do some programming for me for a few months, I can't pay you for your work though, but you like it and would do it anyways right?

    Sure - just open source it. Maybe then we could ditch the structured storage version used in PC-DMIS in favour for XML. Oh, and the 'defaults' button would LOAD the defaults, not set the current settings AS defaults. Sunglasses
  • There is already one portlock, why should the CMM be the second one? I can understand why a lower cost offline seat should not work online but to say that an online seat can not work offline when the CMM is off is silly.
  • We have the same air problem here.They dont want to run compressors $$$$ just for the CMM if its not moving. I work off hours in "offline" mode and then get the air error. Frustrating . I agree it would be nice if you had the choice to continue in offline mode and ignore error.

    just my 2 cents.

    There is already one portlock, why should the CMM be the second one? I can understand why a lower cost offline seat should not work online but to say that an online seat can not work offline when the CMM is off is silly.

    Couldn't agree more.

    Of course, none of you remember that the "ONLINE" seat of Pcdmis didn't used to have the BACKGROUND EDITOR that it now has. I think they made a mistake calling the BACKGROUND EDITOR "offline" in the online version of Pcdmis, since it really is only a BACKGROUND EDITOR and not an offline version of Pcdmis. Yeah, it's nice, no, it didn't used to be part of Pcdmis, it was added. Should this BACKGROUND EDITOR work anytime, yeah, I think so. Could it be an easy change to make, yeah, I think so. Instead of having the "CHOICE" for online or offline ONLY in the OPEN dialog window, put it in the boot-up of Pcdmis as well so that when it boots up, before it "looks" to see if your controller is working, it asks if you want to work online or in BACKGROUND EDITOR mode and "switches" accordingly. Will this remove the ability to work in BACKGROUND EDITOR mode when you boot up to the controller, probably at first as a bug, but it shouldn't be a hard bug to fix.

    This is something that I think Wilcox/B&S/Hexagoon really needs to take a look at. There is STILL only one port lock and STILL only one "seat" woaking at a time, so who gets ripped off with in this scenario? No one. You will have people "using" a cheaper seat than what they paid for and NOT using anything that they haven't paid for since the ONLINE seat includes the BACKGROUND EDITOR.
  • When our management learned of this "Background Editor," they took this up as the torch for why we did not need an offline seat. "We can program while we run production!"

    Try programming a part while another is running. That is, if you do not have any objections to accepting bad parts or crashing expensive equipment. If a program ends with you still in the background editor, it screws up the printing of the report royally. On top of that, I have had it put in autofeatures, movepoints, etc, into the currently running program, not the background program, and vice-versa. After wiping a TP200 and accepting bad parts twice because of this problem, we no longer have more than one program open at a time.
  • When our management learned of this "Background Editor," they took this up as the torch for why we did not need an offline seat. "We can program while we run production!"

    Try programming a part while another is running. That is, if you do not have any objections to accepting bad parts or crashing expensive equipment. If a program ends with you still in the background editor, it screws up the printing of the report royally. On top of that, I have had it put in autofeatures, movepoints, etc, into the currently running program, not the background program, and vice-versa. After wiping a TP200 and accepting bad parts twice because of this problem, we no longer have more than one program open at a time.
    There are a couple of tricks to using the background editor while running parts.

    1) NEVER have 2 programs open that use the same probe file.
    2) Save the stats without the automatic update command at the end of the program, for every progam you run while using the BGE, this makes it "pause", thus allowing you to change to the ONLINE to finish the program.
    3) Open the BGE program BEFORE you cycle the running program.
    4) Do NOT "execute" the BGE program while the running program is running.

    I've never had it add things to the running program. BUT, with the advent of V3.7, some of the "things" stayed visable on the monitor for the program you were NOT seeing. For example, the SEARCH pop-up. You could start running a program, then switch to the BGE program, do a search for something, leave the window open for your next search, then go back to the running program and the stupid SEARCH window is still there. You can still type stuff in it, but it is "working" in the BGE program. If the BGE program is NOT the visable program, NONE of it's command windows of ay kind should be visable, ONLY those that the running program are using should be visable.
  • Brian, you should be able to continue using pcdmis offline if a machine error occurs.
    That way you can save any work you have done without being able to use the cmm directly.
    Is it possible to have pcdmis switch to the offline interface if the cmm hardware kicks out an error message?

    You can save your work when such a machine error occurs. It's not 100% foolproof, but you can.

    When the error comes up for whatever that requires you to shut down pc-dmis it gives you two options "OK" and "Shutdown" correct? If you click "OK" it pops back up immediately right? Well, not quite - at least not as far as the computer is concerned. If you use your left hand to hold the ctrl key and hit s repeatedly and use your right hand to click on "OK", you can get it to save. You have to go through the error window several times sometimes, but it will save (sometimes). After you think it has saved click on "shutdown". Hopefully it worked.

    Give it a try. Open a program, insert a move point at the end, don't save it, hit the e-stop. You'll get the error message. Do the above steps, shutdown PC-DMIS, restart it, open your program and see if the move point is there.

    BTW, I 100% agree that we should be able to use PC-DMIS "offline" on the computer connected to the CMM with the controller turned off.

    Taking the dongle from one computer to another - I can kinda see that, but I also understand why they don't want you doing that.
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