Probe; Global Used?

[Peter Warcholyk]

Good Morning All,

I am running a B&S Mistral, pcdmis ver 3.7m3, windows xp pro.

I am in the process of calibrating my probe. When I open the probe utilities window, I typically select "Mark Used" and continue with the calibration, no problems.

Sometimes, I will select the "Global Used" button, which is supposed to mark the various probe angles commone to any part programs that utilize the current tip. I have used this successfully in the past.

However, for some reason, when I try this lately, the computer chugs slowly, and then I receive a PCDLRN error, which causes pcdmis to close down.

Has anyone else encountered this probem?
Please let me know if there is something that I can do to fix this.

Thanks in advance for your assistance.

ZydecoPete

[Paul Barriage]

3.7 MR1

Not up to that MR level yet, but I have experienced global used not working since 3.5 MR3

[Don Ruggieri]

Corrupt File

I've seen this problem before. In my experience, it was a corrupt part program.

When you select Global Used, it serches all part programs in the path. Through the process of elimination, I found that one of mine was trouble. I removed ALL of them first (moved to mdifferent folder) and found that it did not cause the problem. Then I put half of them back and tried again, and so on until I found the problem file.

Once I deleted the part program in question, all was well. . .

[Ray Wilson]

I to have had problems with "Global Used" for the past few versions. But "Marked Used" works fine and I use that almost daily it seems like.

[Mike N.]

I don't believe it is as global as one would like to think it is. If programs are in multiple sub-folders (or networked) in multiple drives it will crash the software. I believe it was meant to be used in one specific path with only one main folder. Job shops that like to actually organize the programs into customer,family,rev will always have trouble with this function. OF course this is probably version specific like all the options in pcdmis. Sometimes it works and sometimes it don't ....depends on the version.

[Matthew D. Hoedeman]

Global used doe NOT mark all angles that a probe file uses in all programs. It only looks in the SEARCH PATH directory (and I think, with newer versions the CURRENT directory), and looks at the program there, if a program is in a different location, it will not mark those angles.

[Peter Warcholyk]

Many Thanks for you feedback !!

ZydecoPete

[NikoM]

Global used doe NOT mark all angles that a probe file uses in all programs. It only looks in the SEARCH PATH directory (and I think, with newer versions the CURRENT directory), and looks at the program there, if a program is in a different location, it will not mark those angles.

If I am not mistaken you can set up search path directory for global use in Setting Editor.
Bad path can be the reason for PC-DMIS errors and crashes.

[Matthew D. Hoedeman]

If so, then it is something newer than V3.7MR3 that I have not yet looked at (since I do not have my 4.0 disk yet). I just looked and GLOBAL isn't one of the choices. When you set the PART PROGRAM DIRECTORY, that is where it will look to do the global thing, and maybe the current directory you are in (I am not sure about that). But, if you sort your programs by part or job, then you might have that probe with a different angle being used someplace that is not in your search directory. For example, I have my file structure set up:

C:\Pcdmis-Jobs

Then, in that directory, I have sub-directories for each part/job we have in here

C:\Pcdmis-Jobs\JOB25346
C:\Pcdmis-Jobs\JOB25347
(etc.)

Now, if I use the SAME probe for programs in both directories, but each one uses a different bunch of angles, if my search path is set for ...JOB25346, then it will NOT read the angles in the programs in ...JOB25347. I do NOT know what it will do IF you have the search path set for C:\Pcdmis-Jobs and all the programs are in subdirectories, I do not know if it will search them or not. If it will not, then it won't find ANY angles, other than in the program I currently have open, which would have the same effect as MARK USED. I have ALWAYS set my search path for the complete directory path for a grouping of programs when I wanted to do the global thing, you HAD to in V3.5 and earlier, it would NOT (to my remembering) search sub-directories.

[#2#]

OK, here's a good question...
So this global used thing searches your programs and selects an angle if it is used in any program - correct?

If this is the case why not just calibrate all angles set up for that tip. It seems to me that you wouldn't have an angle set up if it wasn't used in at least one program.

Or did I completely miss the point?

[Matthew D. Hoedeman]

Well, what about when your probe file gets slimmed and you have to re-build it? That is the ONLY time I have ever used it.

The other time you would want to use it, is if you are going to run 4 programs on a part, all the programs are in the same directory, but no ONE program uses ALL the tips that are used by all the programs, but other programs use the same profile file, but different tips yet still. This would allow you to NOT calibrate however many tips are not going to be used and save some time. This mostly applies to those of us who still have TP2's and have to screw and un-screw all the little pieces. Why calibrate 57 tips when you are only going to use 12?

[#2#]

Well, what about when your probe file gets slimmed and you have to re-build it? That is the ONLY time I have ever used it.

Ah, good point.

The other time you would want to use it, is if you are going to run 4 programs on a part, all the programs are in the same directory, but no ONE program uses ALL the tips that are used by all the programs, but other programs use the same profile file, but different tips yet still. This would allow you to NOT calibrate however many tips are not going to be used and save some time. This mostly applies to those of us who still have TP2's and have to screw and un-screw all the little pieces. Why calibrate 57 tips when you are only going to use 12?

Another good point. So say you have two folders, 1 and 2. The programs in each folder use the same tip but different angles. So, you can set your search path to folder 1, do the globals thing and it will only select the tips for the programs in folder 1 and not calibrate the tips in folder 2.

I believe you could also set something up to do this with parameter sets. Using a parameter set would eliminate having to change the search path.