Mitutoyo Corporation

Mitutoyo Europe Gmbh

Bart De Vlieghere

Dahai Yu

Eric Yeh-Wei Tseo

Thomas Moch

Michael Peter

A system is provided for programming workpiece feature inspection operations for a coordinate measuring machine. The system includes a computer aided design (CAD) file processing portion, an inspection motion path generation portion and a user interface. The user interface includes a workpiece inspection program simulation portion and auxiliary collision avoidance volume creation elements. The workpiece inspection program simulation portion displays a 3D view and the auxiliary collision avoidance volume creation elements are operable to create or define auxiliary collision avoidance volumes that are displayed in the 3D view. In various implementations, rather than requiring a user to model a physical object (e.g., as part of a workpiece or CMM) in a CAD file, the user may instead create and position an auxiliary collision avoidance volume at a location where the physical object is expected to be, so as to prevent collisions that could occur with the physical object.

Inspection program editing environment providing user defined collision avoidance volumes

A system is provided for programming workpiece feature inspection operations for a coordinate measuring machine. The system includes a computer-aided design (CAD) file processing portion and a user interface including a workpiece inspection program simulation portion, an editing user interface portion, and a simulation status and control portion. The simulation status and control portion is configured to respond to selection of workpiece features or inspection operation representations (e.g., as selected in the workpiece inspection program simulation portion or editing user interface portion). The simulation status and control portion response to the selection includes altering a simulation status portion (e.g., altering a numerical time representation or a position of a current time indicator) to characterize a state of progress through a current workpiece feature inspection plan corresponding to the portion of the current workpiece feature inspection plan directed to the selected workpiece feature or inspection operation representation.

Inspection program editing environment with simulation status and control continually responsive to selection operations

A system is provided for programming workpiece feature inspection operations for a coordinate measuring machine (CMM). The system includes a computer-aided design (CAD) file processing portion and a user interface which includes an editing user interface portion and an execution time indicator. The CAD file processing portion analyzes an input CAD file to automatically determine workpiece features. The editing user interface portion includes an editable plan representation including an editable set of the workpiece features to be inspected. The execution time indicator is indicative of an estimated inspection program execution time for operating the CMM to execute a corresponding workpiece inspection program. The execution time indicator is automatically updated in response to a utilization of one of a first set of operations to modify the current workpiece feature inspection plan, so as to automatically indicate the estimated effect of the modification on the inspection program execution time.

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Oeschelbronn, Germany

Bart De Vlieghere