Relative Measure

[Matthew D. Hoedeman]

Well, gonna try this function, but I can NOT find where to 'activiate' it or select it. The help file isn't much help. I want to do 2 vector points and a sphere in DCC mode RELATIVE to a manual measured feature. I would have thought it would show up in the DCC FEATURES box, but it does not and I can not find how to use this. Any help, probably step-by-step wouldn't hurt.

PCdmis V3.7 MR3

[#2#]

Well, gonna try this function, but I can NOT find where to 'activiate' it or select it. The help file isn't much help. I want to do 2 vector points and a sphere in DCC mode RELATIVE to a manual measured feature. I would have thought it would show up in the DCC FEATURES box, but it does not and I can not find how to use this. Any help, probably step-by-step wouldn't hurt.

PCdmis V3.7 MR3

Maybe this is why it isn't there!

I would assume that this is similar to transferring the orgin to the feature and then measuring the other features - only without the alignment. This could be useful if anyone knows how to get it to work.

[Matthew D. Hoedeman]

Well, I found it, using the toolbar, but it will not do a sphere in relative, does that mean I have to do a series of points to make the sphere?

[cmmguy]

Why cant you embed the coordinates of the manual feature plus the offset(relative part) into the sphere routine?
manualFeature.x+offsetammount,manualfeature.y+offs etamount, etc...

[craiger_ny]

The help file blows on this one. Help me out and explain this to one this is new teritory for me. What is relative measurement area?

[Matthew D. Hoedeman]

Screw it, assigning variables and using them works, the relative thing bites the big one. It may take longer, but it works.

[craiger_ny]

Dammit man that is not what I want to hear. Why do you make me curious about something that is described in the help file with a five word sentence then leave me hanging? I'm going to be thinking about this all weekend now.

[Peter Warcholyk]

Matthew,

Just fired up the forum site. If you want to use "relative measure" you need to use "surface points" not "vector points".

I belive that the vector points is the only feature that you can't utilize this way.

I use the relative measure function all the time and find it quite useful.

I hope that you will see this post.

Best Regards,
ZydecoPete

[craiger_ny]

So Pete, what is relative measure and it's applications? I've been squeezing Matt for this because I've never heard of it but he is ignoring me.

Craig

[Matthew D. Hoedeman]

Matthew,

Just fired up the forum site. If you want to use "relative measure" you need to use "surface points" not "vector points".

I belive that the vector points is the only feature that you can't utilize this way.

I use the relative measure function all the time and find it quite useful.

I hope that you will see this post.

Best Regards,
ZydecoPete

YEP, I see it, but SPHERE will not let me do relative measure, so I went with the ASSIGN method.

HEY BOOGER-BOY, the relative measure is supposed to allow you to measure a feature in RELATIONSHIP to a previously measured feature. This will allow you to write a DCC program for a VERY variable feature. For example, on my project, I have a bunch of die shoes that we need to map out the location of the keyways and the guide bushings (we didn't build the tools) so that they can be mounted on parent shoes. Well, none of the die shoes are the same size, so I have a very variable situation. I have made up some very fancy blocks, they are all the common keyway sizes and they have a hole for a tooling ball in them that will locate the tooling ball on the center of the keyway at the bottom surface of the shoe. Well, there is no in/out stop on them AND since the shoes all vary in size, I have no idea where they will end up in each shoe. I wrote a single program to do this map work. The manual alignment is based on the tooling balls in the 4 keyway blocks. Well, I didn't want 6 alignments in the program, just 2, the manual and the DCC alignment. So, I wanted to do a relative measurement of the tooling balls in the DCC portion of the program, with the DCC spheres being relative to the actual measured values of the tooling balls from the manual alignment. See what I am getting at? The relative measurement would have been slick, but sphere is not one of the options, as far as I can see.

[craiger_ny]

So it is an alternative to alignments? It sounds like it adds flexibility in that perhaps you could run similar parts with like geometry and certain identical dimensions with one program if you are slick about it. I think I might have the gist of it.

[cmmguy]

It allows you to measure a feature "relative" to another feature without having to set any alignments to it. I guess you could think of it like a temporary alignment for that feature measurement only.

[craiger_ny]

No? I guess I don't get it. Oh well chalk up another thing I don't get.

[cmmguy]

If you need to measure a feature relative to the location of another feature you would normally set a datum origin on it. But if you didnt want to constantly be reseting datums(the features aren't necessarily dimensioned from those other features) you can use the relative measurement method. It is not about reporting the feature, it is about finding the feature to measure it.

For example:
Lets say that you wanted to measure the height of a counter bore face but the width of the counter bore face is narrow enough that the bore diameter's tolerance might interfere with the measurement of the counterface.
So you would go into the bore, touch the side of the bore above the counterface, and then touch the counterface "relative" to the bore touch.

[Matthew D. Hoedeman]

What it allows you to do, is NO MATTER how a feature checks, you can check the next feature in an exact relationship to the first. Lets say you need to check the surface of a part EXACTLY 10mm in X+ to a hole, NO MATTER WHERE THE HOLE IS. The point will be checked 100 in X+ from the actual location of the hole, all without doing any extra alignments.