Custom Probe Tip CAD

[SingularitY]

Our company has a custom probe that we made in-house and I am trying to build the tip as closely to the real thing as possible. I have the probe build pretty much spot on, but the CAD of the tip looks different because PC-DMIS doesn't have the exact components needed while building the CAD in probe utilities. Is there a way to edit/create tip CADs to accomplish this? I looked everywhere I could think of and I could only find .draw probe files, but they seem to be probes only, not tips.

[NinjaBadger]

Search the help files (and the forum) for probe.dat (and usrprobe.dat).

These files contain the information for all the different probe components. You can create your own (which go in the usrprobe.dat file) - it takes a little while to get your head around it at first but it's not that difficult really, especially if it's similar to something that already exists (which you can copy and modify).

Oh, and it's nothing CAD related as such - it's code which defines the nominal sizes and appearance of the stylus).

[SingularitY]

Amazing! After some testing and help file searching, it worked like a charm. I even edited some other tips that were bugging me just to get more familiar. Thanks for the help!

[Matthew D. Hoedeman]

Search the help files (and the forum) for probe.dat (and usrprobe.dat).

These files contain the information for all the different probe components. You can create your own (which go in the usrprobe.dat file) - it takes a little while to get your head around it at first but it's not that difficult really, especially if it's similar to something that already exists (which you can copy and modify).

Oh, and it's nothing CAD related as such - it's code which defines the nominal sizes and appearance of the stylus).

anyone else ever notice how OLD the 'tech' is for the probe.dat data? It is Basic language graphics drawing commands....

[davehocum]

Well, that just tells everyone how outdated Pcdmis is. It will take Hexagon years to go to WPF from MFC. The Basic script editor (Cypress Enable) last update was in 2005 on their website. I was just reading a Visual Studio forum dated in 2009 with developers stating that MFC was old technology. Basically MFC is dead now. Maybe Hexagon could save time and money by adding CNC CMM to Inspire.

[davehocum]

Use CAD software and the Custom Probe Builder Utility to create your custom probe.

[SingularitY]

Search the help files (and the forum) for probe.dat (and usrprobe.dat).

These files contain the information for all the different probe components. You can create your own (which go in the usrprobe.dat file) - it takes a little while to get your head around it at first but it's not that difficult really, especially if it's similar to something that already exists (which you can copy and modify).

Oh, and it's nothing CAD related as such - it's code which defines the nominal sizes and appearance of the stylus).

Exactly what I was looking for!
The custom probe builder utility looks like it has potential also, but this was easy and did it's job nicely. Thanks everyone!