InnovMetric releases PolyWorks® 2017

By Niraj M Wanikar, Chief Editor, CNCTimes.com, 2017-05-03 11:34:00

InnovMetric releases PolyWorks® 2017, delivering a new control-centric reviewing workflow

InnovMetric Software Inc., the leading provider of universal 3D metrology software solutions, today launched PolyWorks 2017, the latest release of the company’s universal 3D metrology software platform. PolyWorks 2017 delivers a new control-centric reviewing workflow – a key upgrade for all portable metrology and CNC CMM measurement specialists that need to share large metrology projects, containing hundreds of dimensional and GD&T controls, with colleagues, customers, and suppliers. It also provides a major technology upgrade for large-volume metrology applications and a unique approach to real-time collision analysis for more efficient CNC CMM project setups.

Control-centric reviewing workflow

“Because they provide invaluable feedback on manufactured parts and on the performance of the manufacturing process, 3D measurements must be efficiently planned and executed by measurement specialists. Then, the results have to be thoroughly reviewed by manufacturing specialists to make informed engineering decisions. With 3D inspection projects designed for planning and executing measurements, time-consuming manipulations are required when sharing measurement results using standard 2D reports. For reviewers, interpreting results found in static tables and snapshots within extensive reports can be challenging, frustrating, and inefficient. Oftentimes, this traditional approach requires back-and-forth communication with measurement specialists to extract additional information from the 3D inspection project,” said Marc Soucy, President of InnovMetric. “With the new dimensional-control-centric approach in PolyWorks 2017, the PolyWorks|Inspector™ 3D metrology project is the report! By enabling measurement specialists to communicate results directly in 3D, considerable productivity gains are guaranteed for our customers. PolyWorks 2017 also empowers reviewers to investigate measurement results contextually in 3D with dynamic navigation tools.”

Using the new Control Reviewer in PolyWorks|Inspector™ or in the free PolyWorks|Viewer™, measurement specialists and manufacturing specialists can now:

• Access a global list of dimensional controls sorted by characteristic index, making it the ideal tool to prepare first-article inspection reports.

• Add custom controls to the global list of controls; for example, those measured using manual gauges.
• Easily split an inspection project into small and logical groups of controls called Control Views.
• Tie individual controls to specific data alignments and coordinate systems, enabling multicontextual Control Views.
• Search, sort, and filter controls to highlight critical results.
• Display control views automatically in 3D with the right point of view.
• Generate formatted reports automatically.

Major technology upgrade for large-volume metrology applications

InnovMetric is proud to release its most significant technology enhancements for customers who need to assemble and inspect large structures such as those found in the aerospace, shipyard, and energy industries. Users can now:

• Predefine and configure a list of laser tracker devices, and connect to multiple trackers simultaneously. With PolyWorks 2017, to guide assembly building in real time, switch the active tracker instantaneously and feed measured reflector positions to digital readouts.
• Align point-to-object using a powerful technique that aligns points to different geometrical characteristics of matched objects (such as center points, axes, or surfaces) and control the alignment direction, weight, and participation to the scaling factor computation for each pair of matched geometries.
• Probe surface features before their nominal components are defined or the part is aligned to the CAD model.

Real-time collision analysis for more efficient CNC CMM project setups

Measurement specialists who define probing and laser scanning paths on CNC CMMs now have access to a collision analysis engine that detects potential tool collisions with the part or the fixtures, and provides visual feedback on problematic tool paths in the Sequence Editor and the 3D Scene.

Thanks to two major innovations, the PolyWorks collision analysis approach stands out from competing CMM software products:

• PolyWorks collision analysis is carried out in real time while the measurement sequence is created or edited, such as when new measurement objects are added to a sequence. This allows operators to immediately fix problematic tool paths and avoid accumulating issues.
• PolyWorks collision analysis is performed both offline and online, and warns users about potential collisions even when they launch a measurement operation outside of the Sequence Editor. Traditionally, this feature is offered solely as an offline functionality in other software.

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