A quick hi to everyone as this is my first post on the new forum.
Has anybody out there ever tried to create a parametric program in PC Dmis. I dont just mean assigning variables to a few features but an actual full parametric programming. I will try and explain my problem below.
We manufacture turbine blades and have one type which is fairly consistent in its design. It varies in size (all of its dimensions) and may / may not have certain features like slots, grooves etc etc. Going back 5 years or so, a group of lads that work here created an absolutley huge parametric program in MM4 (not sure how many people remember this software). They created a set of formulas that mathematically defined every blade type using planes, lines and points and used scripts inside MM4 that ran these formulas. They then had a set of parameters which were taken from the blade drawing and stored these along with other information like contract, part number, type etc as a text file. They then came up with a set of predefined rules on how each blade type would be measured and used these as the basis of the program. To create a new program all we had to do was create a new text file based on the blade drawing, run this thorugh MM4 and bingo, a set of programs was created which measured the part at each stage of its manufacturing process.
The problem we have now is that MM4 is no longer really supported by Hexagon (Brown and Sharpe) plus we recently upgraded our controllers and now get really strange errors when running this program. We also no longer have the resource in MM4 to spend any length of time repairing / rewriting the code especially when it is software which is very outdated. The third factor is PC Dmis does a far better job when using things like best fit and we really want to take advantage of this. What I need to do is create this in PC Dmis. Before I started this mammoth task I thought I would stick a post on here and see if anyone else has actually done this. I have a few ideas which way I want to create it but if anyone knows of or has done this before any help would be appreciated.
PS - There are three of us that work together and between us we generate our own 3D CAD models in ProE from 2D drawings, manufacturing NC programs and also the PC Dmis / MM4 inspection programs. We have parametrically created a set of parts in ProE which we can change via an Excel spreadsheet. This way we can simply change a few variables in Excel and automatically regenerate in ProE, a full set of working models for each stage of manufacture complete with sensible coordinate systems that we use in PC Dmis. On these models we have also parametrically defined the points we would measure in PC Dmis but as yet, havent really thought how we can get them out and into a PC Dmis program. What we dont want to have to do is manually create a PC Dmis program for each component when we are sure this can be caried out parametrically.
All ideas are welcome, I really hope someone has already done something like this or similar as its gonna take me a long time to create this.
Thanks in advance
Jon
Has anybody out there ever tried to create a parametric program in PC Dmis. I dont just mean assigning variables to a few features but an actual full parametric programming. I will try and explain my problem below.
We manufacture turbine blades and have one type which is fairly consistent in its design. It varies in size (all of its dimensions) and may / may not have certain features like slots, grooves etc etc. Going back 5 years or so, a group of lads that work here created an absolutley huge parametric program in MM4 (not sure how many people remember this software). They created a set of formulas that mathematically defined every blade type using planes, lines and points and used scripts inside MM4 that ran these formulas. They then had a set of parameters which were taken from the blade drawing and stored these along with other information like contract, part number, type etc as a text file. They then came up with a set of predefined rules on how each blade type would be measured and used these as the basis of the program. To create a new program all we had to do was create a new text file based on the blade drawing, run this thorugh MM4 and bingo, a set of programs was created which measured the part at each stage of its manufacturing process.
The problem we have now is that MM4 is no longer really supported by Hexagon (Brown and Sharpe) plus we recently upgraded our controllers and now get really strange errors when running this program. We also no longer have the resource in MM4 to spend any length of time repairing / rewriting the code especially when it is software which is very outdated. The third factor is PC Dmis does a far better job when using things like best fit and we really want to take advantage of this. What I need to do is create this in PC Dmis. Before I started this mammoth task I thought I would stick a post on here and see if anyone else has actually done this. I have a few ideas which way I want to create it but if anyone knows of or has done this before any help would be appreciated.
PS - There are three of us that work together and between us we generate our own 3D CAD models in ProE from 2D drawings, manufacturing NC programs and also the PC Dmis / MM4 inspection programs. We have parametrically created a set of parts in ProE which we can change via an Excel spreadsheet. This way we can simply change a few variables in Excel and automatically regenerate in ProE, a full set of working models for each stage of manufacture complete with sensible coordinate systems that we use in PC Dmis. On these models we have also parametrically defined the points we would measure in PC Dmis but as yet, havent really thought how we can get them out and into a PC Dmis program. What we dont want to have to do is manually create a PC Dmis program for each component when we are sure this can be caried out parametrically.
All ideas are welcome, I really hope someone has already done something like this or similar as its gonna take me a long time to create this.
Thanks in advance
Jon
Comment