Hexagon Holes

[KBearden]

You would think, with a name like Hexagon Metrology, that they would at least have an auto feature dedicated to checking Hexagon holes right???
Any suggestions as to the best way??

[Matthew D. Hoedeman]

The way I do it is to measure a circle with 6 evenly spaced hits, using the re-measure function. Try to get the hits as centered on the flats as you can by playing with the start/end angle. The remeasure function is VERY important as it will then remeasure the hole at the position it just measured it at, helping you to get a better center. The size will be questionable since you really have no way of making sure you are actually on center with your hits.

[Mr.Natural]

Measure it as a circle with 6 hits, move your start & end angles to hit the center of the flats. this will give ya location & size across the flats. hope this is what you were looking for.

[Mr.Natural]

Hey Matt ya beat me to it, I forgot about the re-measure

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

For size I recomend using gage pins and a keyed in diameter.

Bill

[craiger_ny]

Measure it as a circle with 6 hits, move your start & end angles to hit the center of the flats. this will give ya location & size across the flats. hope this is what you were looking for.

I'd be skeptical of size reporting with this method as Matt said. How is this feature specified? Do you anly need locatioin only for alignment/dimensioning? Hexagon might not have a solution for you but we may. Let us know how it is spec'd and one of the gurus here might be able to assist.

Craig

[VONDY]

re

Could you take two hits on one of the flats, create a line and rotate to it, then all off you hits should hit center.

[KBearden]

There are five of these .937 hexagons on the part. Four of which are located at close proximity of the four corners of a square piece of metal. One of the four is used a datum or x/y origin.
Thanks for the ideas though. That is how I have done it in the past. But, it just seems that this would be a definite go for an auto feature. Don't you guys think?
How about one of you User Forum gurus start a poll and let's all vote on it, so that Hexagon would be more apt to incorporate it into the software as an auto feature??

[craiger_ny]

OK so I am assuming there is a size callout of accross the flats (probably called out as TYP or 3 PLCS?). And location as well. Are there orientation requirements?

Craig

[Mike Johnston]

I have ran into the same issue... What I did was picked up a line on each one of the flats and then constructed points using the intersected lines all the way around the hex feature. Once I constructed all of the intersection points I created a MAX_INSC circle from the points and then dimensioned the diameter. Seems like a little work but I was pleased with the results.

Mike

[eacosta]

Measure a 2d line on each flat for a total of 6 lines, create 6 intersections point using contiguous lines, after that construct a circle with 6 intersection points
now you can dimension location, if you need size maybe you can check the 2d distance between opposite lines,

Now on Version 4.0 there is a new automatic feature called Automatic Polygon
in order for measurements of Polygons equally spaced from 3 sides to 12,

better wait for 4.1 to use it

[cmmguy]

OK, go one step further and take the midpoints of each of the intersection points and then construct a MaxInscCircle from those midpoints. This should give you the effective pin diameter for the hole and a pretty repeatable location. If you need "across the flat dimensions" then do straight line distances between midpoints.