Help - Several issues - Windows upgrade lost user settings

[bjgalbreath]

I'm running PC DMIS 2018 R2. My company just upgraded from Windows 7 to 10 and PC DMIS has become an absolute nightmare. Most likely due to my inexperience more than anything. When it runs good, I can do great things with it, but once it begins to act up I'm at a loss. I'm sort of stuck in a domino effect where once I figure one thing out there's another problem keeping me from moving forward. I'm sorry for the long post but I'm trying to be as thorough as I can to avoid a lot of back and forth trying to figure out how to fix the issues.

Missing probe profiles
After the Windows upgrade, I lost all of my probes in the probe list. I managed to find the old files and copy them into the PC DMIS folder and regained most of my probes and tips. The main 2mm probe that I use did not have any tips listed and the probe description was incomplete. After some back and forth with our IT guy, they determined the missing data is from a corrupted backup. Through a lot of trial and error I managed to figure out how to rebuild the probe complete. Now that I know what I'm doing on this part it isn't that big of an issue, but I'm wondering if there's a better way to go about it in case something like this happens in the future.
Also, every time I reopen PC DMIS and go into the Probe Utilities, I have to re-check the draw this component box. Is there any way for it to just stay drawn from here on out?

Active tips
Now that the probe is built and it gives me an active tip, I need to figure out how to get my active tips created. At first, PC DMIS automatically created the first tip as T1A0B0 CAMERA, which I do not have the license (or tools) to use. When trying to add angles a popup asks me to select a probe to make active. Selecting my 2x50 probe and hitting ok pops up "Error: Contact Probe must be Star Probe with three tips". I'm not sure what I did differently, but after retrying to create the probe tip a few times the active tip gave me T0A0B0 BALL (which none of the other probes or previous versions of the profiles have a T0 position). With this probe tip, I can access the Add Angles section. I can type in the a and b angles that I need and click Add and they show up in the new angles list, but when I hit OK nothing new shows up in the active tip list. I need to figure out, at the very least, how to get T1A0B0 BALL since that is the most common tip used in all my programs.

Calibration tools
Despite not ever having any T0 positions in the tips lists, I was going to see if maybe calibrating it will let me be able to add the other positions. So when I select the tip and go to Measure, I realize the list of available tools is blank. Great. After tons of Googling and searching through old files, I cannot find anything with an obvious name that could indicate backed up profiles for the calibration tools. If even such a thing exists. I figure I might just have to start these from scratch. I added a new tool, named it, set the vectors, diameter of the sphere, and material. Now I'm at the part where I need to take the manual hits.

Probe changer
When trying to run the calibration, I realize that of course the probe changer settings aren't their either. The machine tells me to load the probe I need rather than go get it from the rack. I should have known. I found a post in these forums stating that the position needs to be calibrated. But seeing as how my probes aren't calibrated, I think I'm going to have to load the probe by hand and calibrate it first. Also, when going into Operation menu and down to Calibrate/Edit, the Probe changer selection is grayed out and can't be clicked. Is there anything that needs to be done to get it working again?

CMM stops moving
I hand loaded the 2x50 probe in order to calibrate it, and after moving it into position, I adjusted to speed to bring it down toward the qualification sphere, but it didn't move. It didn't move in any direction. I hit e-stop and got it going again and moved it around for a little bit. Once I stopped moving, it didn't start moving. No errors, no lights on my controller turning off, no beeping or red lights on the arm. Just not moving. Turned the control box off and back on, homed the machine, restarted the computer. Out of several attempts, only once did it beep at me and pop up "Error AI .s%1 .TR_AI .0X15002012 Excessive lag on Y axis. Emergency Error." I've since been able to move it after that error too. But it's the moment I let go of the joystick, it no longer wants to move. Does this have anything to do with the probes not being calibrated?



These are the issues I've encountered so far. Hopefully no more surface as things get going. If anybody here has any solutions, advice, or can even point me in the right direction to get any or all of this figured out I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks in advance!

[sealevel]

I would never trust IT to watch over your happy settings.
IT knows a lot of many things, but more times than not... they are not careful about your Demon installation.

I just went from win7 to 10 as well with 2018 R2. Ouch. My first prob? Certain registry settings are hosed. Example... I change the dim res from 4 places to 5? I get errors in registry settings barking that keys can't be written for several keys which were fine in win 7. example:

no_reg_perm.PNG

I had to manually fix that. Paths even though IT promised me I had 'local admin' rights, they wouldn't stick. Like 'Probe Directory'. Ouch. No matter - you should keep a BACK-UP of that sucker 3 times over!

The license stuff? You should open your custprog.exe and make sure you got the correct 'goodies' in your license. CAMERA seems a bit odd unless you use Vision.

In your probe utils box, maybe check: 'Reset tips to THEO at start of calibration' if your probes are hosed.

To edit or know where your sphere is? It's tool.dat and keep that backed up as well. Path (in 2018) should be:
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Hexagon\PC-DMIS\2018 R2

For better help, it would be nice to know your probe head, probe and rack.......... in lieu of that...
good luck with win 10 (and the nice mandatory updates from IT!)

[neil.challinor]

This is a common problem when an IT guy does the install without talking to the CMM guy first and without following the instructions in the ReadMe file. In both of the previous posts, the symptoms described point to the install procedure not being performed correctly. As with all software, when you install PC-Dmis you need to be running as an Administrator. Most IT guys get this bit right, but they tend to use their own admin account, install the software and walk away. What they neglect to do is to ensure that every person who needs to use the software is given full admin rights to launch PC-Dmis for the first time following the new install. If this is not done, then PC-Dmis is unable to configure itself for that user and cannot create any of the registry keys or user specific files & locations it needs to keep track of user settings. - hence the error message shown in Sealevel's post. As I said, the ReadMe fully documents the steps that need to be followed and the areas that users require access to in order to run PC-Dmis.

In bjgalbreath case, they should have used the settings editor to create a backup of the registry settings and user files on the old PC. Installed PC-Dmis on the new PC and then launched it choosing "run as administrator" for every user account that needs to use it and then used the settings editor again to restore the backups. If there are multiple users, each with their own login and user preferences then the backup and restore process may need to be repeated for each account.

In both cases, the IT guys should also have made sure they explicitly set the relevant permissions for all of the folder locations and registry areas PC-Dmis requires access to. This has been discussed numerous times on this forum in the past and is a common support topic - that's why it's documented in the ReadMe.

This is a document that I usually email to IT guys when they run into these kinds of problems. It was adapted from an old post by one of our guys in the US (can't find the original post at the moment).