The primary purpose of synchronization is to allow the inspection process to be developed and executed in parallel to the design process. This process takes the information created during the inspection process and merges it into the master model (design model).
During synchronization, the system attempts to merge all information contained within the measurement plan into the master model. This basically means groups and measurement points are transferred to the master model. Groups will be created as simple groups (no variable group support) and will include sequencing information and local coordinate system information. Measurement points will include position, index and sequence information.
Synchronization cannot be used to transfer new tolerances or annotations to the master model. For example, suppose the inspection engineer creates a new GDT tolerance, the CSV file will contain measurement information for this tolerance. But when this is synchronized with the master model, this tolerance will fail since the GDT tolerance does not exist on the master model. The inspection engineer is only allowed to create new groups and measurement points on their copy of the model. Other than these two items, no new entities of any other type can be created and successfully transferred back to the master model. If failure occurs while processing a specific entry, that entry is noted in the log file and the process skips to the next entity.
Periodically, the inspection engineer will need to synchronize the model with the master model held by the design engineer. This is achieved by exporting the measurement plan and synchronizing it with the desired model.
Importing a synchronization file will inevitably lead to inconsistencies between data entered by the inspection engineer and current data in the master model. Judgements need to be made to resolve these inconsistencies. If errors occur, a detailed synchronization report is generated to explain which annotation (by index number) could not be processed and why and how inconsistencies were resolved. These are written to an HTML file. Although an attempt will always be made to resolve any ambiguities, synchronization is a complex process and it is inevitable that it will not always be possible to satisfactorily resolve all issues that occur.
The synchronization import ignores measurement points relating to annotations that are no longer present in the master design model (since these must now be obsolete).
Careful comparison of the measurement point indexes stored within the design model and those in the external file is necessary since the inspection engineer's model and the design engineer's model may be out of step. If indexed points in the model are no longer in the external file, it will be assumed that the points are obsolete and can be deleted from the model. If an indexed point is in the external file, not in the model, but has an index number less than the highest in the model, the point is also obsolete and can be ignored. However, for an indexed point that appears in both the model and the external file, or is clearly a new point which the model has not previously encountered, the model must be updated to include the new data.
Teaching
Teaching is the process of updating the location of measurement points on the design model as driven by the actual location of the inspected points on the manufactured part. For example, the inspection engineer may specify a measurement location which is not achievable by the inspector. The inspector is then forced to adjust this location and by using the teaching process, can update the measurement point on the design model.
When exporting a measurement plan the first time, all measurement points are marked as untaught. After teaching, those points that have been taught are marked as taught on each subsequent export of the CSV file. All points marked as untaught indicate to the inspector that these points have either:
• Not been processed (that is, new points in the measurement plan, or,
• Have never been taught.
When exporting a CSV file, the system automatically provides symbolic linking within the CSV file. This allows the inspector to enter a taught point only once within the CSV file even though that particular taught point may be used in many locations. If symbolic linking is disabled, then linking will not occur in the CSV file and each field will be treated as a separate entry.
Evaluating Measured Results
• Generating The Data
When the CSV file is filled with inspection results, it can be loaded into Creo Elements/Direct Modeling to visually show the results of the inspected data. Inspected data may be supplied as an inspected location or an inspected value for each measurement point specified in the CSV file. If applicable, a single inspected value can be supplied for any required tolerance.
The inspector updates the file to include inspection results.
It is also be possible to enter result data directly into the Inspection module instead of into an external file. This is done through the Inspection module's graphical browser (by selecting the corresponding command from the right-click menu). However, such data is not saved and only exists during the life of a single session. This is just a convenient way of collecting measurement data while using Creo Elements/Direct Modeling to identify annotations. To store this measurement data, it must be written to an external file.
• Importing for Evaluation
When a CSV file is read into the Inspection module for evaluation, the system displays an evaluation browser which organizes the groups into various categories. Based on your needs, the data can be organized by measurement group or organized by limit groups. Loading a new external file will overwrite all previously loaded inspection data. Limit groups collect annotations whose measured values fall within specified percentage ranges relative to their tolerance. These percentages can be configured within the Inspection module (that is, number of ranges and specific upper/lower ranges).
Visualization
During evaluation, faces are colored according to the tolerance range within which they fall. For example, by default, all tolerances which exceed 100% of the design limit are shown in red. Additionally, all faces which belong to those annotations are also shown in red.
By default, a color is assigned to each limit group. The colors are used to visualize the faces, tolerances and measurement points which are most significantly out of specification. Typically, a color such as red may be used to signify high error with a progression through to green for a smaller error.
Visualization settings can be changed for the following:
• Customizable color coding (including one for invalid tolerances). Customizing of limit ranges used by adding and removing boundary percentage limits.
• You can also specify whether the evaluation considers measurements relative to the lower tolerance, the upper tolerance or both (absolute) measurements. The first two options are necessary to allow the inspection engineer to identify measurements that fall outside of the lower and upper tolerances (since only a single color can be applied to any entity). The default setting for tolerance types is Upper & Lower.
• The user interface requires specification of a datum precision. This is the number of units by which measurement points defining a datum may vary but still be considered within specification.
When the settings controlled by the user interface are applied, limit colors will be applied to the faces (related to the annotation) displayed in the viewport. If a face is referenced by multiple measurement annotations, the color applicable to the annotation with the worst error will be used. Such colors will persist in the viewport only until a new command is initiated.
During measurement evaluation, limit colors are also applied to the annotations displayed in the groups browser.
Visualization of measurement points is intended to allow the inspection engineer to understand where a part is failing to meet its specification. Measurement points are represented by arrows (displayed in the specific color) pointing away from faces in the measurement direction. The lengths of the lines will be proportional to the percentage error of a point (although a configurable global scaling factor will be applied to all lines). Alongside each arrow will be the measurement point index. Display of measurement points will be initiated from the measurement graphical browser, which will allow control of how many measurement points are shown.
User-defined ranges can be defined in the customization files which are automatically loaded during load time.