Auto Cylinder

[B. Jacobs]

OK here goes.
I have used the auto cylinder feature a few time with sucess on a hole.
What I am trying to do now is create a cylinder for the outside of a stud. I put the probe where I want to start taking hits, tell it how high I want it, the diam it is, and how many rows and hit to take.
When i hit create to measure it, the probe goes away from the cylinder then starts coming in to take the hits. The problem is that it goes WAY away from it and then I get the message No Probeing Within Limits.
I don't know where I am going wrong. I have played with the vectors and have the blue arrow going away from the cylinder and the green arrow going towards the cylinder. This doesn't work. I get a message Angle Vector is parallel to to centerline vector.
Could someone tell me where I am going wrong.

Thanks

3.5 MR2

[jmgreen]

Cylinders can be a pain, and I'm certainly no expert but here are a few thoughts.
Check your prehit and retract values
Make sure when you are initially learning the cylinder that you teach a plane first, either around the base or on top of the stud and check your values so that they match.
look at any move/tos before the cylinder to make sure they haven't changed.
Hope this helps. The plane sounds like it may resolve your issue.

[Don Ruggieri]

Cylinder Height?

The XYZ that you give the cylinder should be at the base, and this is where the plane should be measured if you are learning it. I suspect you might have given it the XYZ at the top, and then when the height is added it is well above the actual part.

[Bill **********]

You must have the BLUE vectors pointing in the direction of the cylinder, and the GREEN vectors pointed opposite your approach direction. The parallel vector message is saying that your approach direction and the cylinder vector are both the same. They may be + and - but they are along the same line. Just remember, BLUE is the direction of the Cylinder, and Green is the approach direction of the probe. They need to be different from one another. You can mess with your GREEN vectors for a stud cylinder and set the angles to 90/-90 to take 180 degrees of the stud. For instance, assuming a coorginate system of Z up X ahead, and Y to the left, lets say that your cylinder is on a 45 along the X/Z axis (.7074/0/.7074). You can set your GREEN approach vectors to 0/0/1, coming in from the top, and your start end angles to 90/-90 and the probe will walk around the cylinder hitting 180 degrees around the top half of the cylinder. Play with it a little it is a VERY handy tool once you understand it.

Bill

[Devaney]

I agree it is very handy once you get the hang of it. Watch the diameter and hole/stud.

The help file was actually pretty good about defining the different fields once you find your way to it.

[B. Jacobs]

Thanks for all the help. I have played with it and got it working. Don't know what I did, but it is working. I will play with it more to try to understand it.
Thanks again