[mod_o_matic]

Sorry if this is in the wrong place...
CMM machines. Just want some information on them. Are they easy to use? Can they create CAD files that i could open in Pro-E?
Basically, if i have a part and want to recreate it using a CMM what are the steps involved?

[dertsap]

as far as ease of use , they are as good as the guy using them , for example if a guy is using a manual cmm and he's had one too many coffee's or is hung over and has the jitters then the readings on tight tolerance stuff can be all over the place

[keebler303]

So you're looking to reverse engineer a part?

Depending on the complexity of the part, it may be easy or hard with a standard cmm. With basic features, you can use the CMM to pick off points and use those as references in your pro-e model. Basically building the model as you go. This is pretty eqasy for simple parts but if you're dealing with freeform shapes, it becomes impossible to do by hand, at least with any accuracy. You can howevr buy a laser scanner that will mount in the cmm and will give you thousands of points per second. This gives you lots of raw data, but you still need to get it into cad. Pro-E might have point cloud import, I don't know. Even if it does, you still need to be able to smooth out imperfections, fix "holes" in the data, etc. There is software in existence which will turn the raw data into a solid model with feature tree and all but it is $$$. The name escapes me but I saw it at a presentation by Metris, who makes the laser scanners.

If you could give me an idea of what kind of parts you are dealing with and what the accuracy needs to be, maybe a better solution could be proposed.

Matt