Do away with manual alignments - use Readpoint

so with this readpoint alignment, does the operator have to physically take the manual point, or just place the probe in the area described?

Also does the readpoint work with parts that have datum targets? I must not be doing this right but it doesn't seem to work to well. I place the probe above the part about one inch, and centered on a hole, thats in the Z plus, this hole is also a known distance from the datum targets that are in the Y minus. But when I go to add an auto pnt on the Y1 datum, it is not in the Y location that it should be according to the print, it is off by 3mm.

The readpoint is not supposed to make contact. I'll be honest, I've explored this method a little bit (as well as a one touch xyz origin translation method - that is, take one hit along z+ vector and translate xyz origin to it, then do a DCC 123 alignment)- enough to understand the basics, but got scared off when one of my programs went 90 degrees wacky after a couple runs. I believe this was caused by the parts cad alignment being 90 degrees from the cmm table. (cmm table x+ = cad y+, or something like that) Long story abbreviated after playing around with it, I found it easier for me to just do a quick 123 manual alignment. Then, in my experience, it never matters how the cad coordinate system is originally - the software has no trouble relating the orientation. Mind you, I did not fully flesh out the cause of this, but I was unable to get an answer for why it did this from the forums on it either so I decided to just move away from them. For what we run, I really wouldn't save much time, and I'm the only programmer/operator at this shop so I'm not dealing with the "button pushers"

You may need to add a "rough" 1-2-3 alignment in before going to the datum targets. You could try: 1.) take read point 2.) DCC "rough" 123 alignment, quick and dirty 3.) DCC proper alignment hitting the datum targets. If that doesn't work, post the code if you can.

so with this readpoint alignment, does the operator have to physically take the manual point, or just place the probe in the area described?

Also does the readpoint work with parts that have datum targets? I must not be doing this right but it doesn't seem to work to well. I place the probe above the part about one inch, and centered on a hole, thats in the Z plus, this hole is also a known distance from the datum targets that are in the Y minus. But when I go to add an auto pnt on the Y1 datum, it is not in the Y location that it should be according to the print, it is off by 3mm.

The readpoint is not supposed to make contact. I'll be honest, I've explored this method a little bit (as well as a one touch xyz origin translation method - that is, take one hit along z+ vector and translate xyz origin to it, then do a DCC 123 alignment)- enough to understand the basics, but got scared off when one of my programs went 90 degrees wacky after a couple runs. I believe this was caused by the parts cad alignment being 90 degrees from the cmm table. (cmm table x+ = cad y+, or something like that) Long story abbreviated after playing around with it, I found it easier for me to just do a quick 123 manual alignment. Then, in my experience, it never matters how the cad coordinate system is originally - the software has no trouble relating the orientation. Mind you, I did not fully flesh out the cause of this, but I was unable to get an answer for why it did this from the forums on it either so I decided to just move away from them. For what we run, I really wouldn't save much time, and I'm the only programmer/operator at this shop so I'm not dealing with the "button pushers"

You may need to add a "rough" 1-2-3 alignment in before going to the datum targets. You could try: 1.) take read point 2.) DCC "rough" 123 alignment, quick and dirty 3.) DCC proper alignment hitting the datum targets. If that doesn't work, post the code if you can.