Creo Point file (.pts) to PC Dmis file

[dplachinski]

Has anyone come up with a conversion (other than hand editing) for PC Dmis to read a Creo .pts file?

Creo .pts file is in this format :

! DATUM POINT ARRAY DATA FILE
!
! Comment lines should begin with an exclamation mark (!).
! You may have as many comment lines as you wish.
! There must be at least one space between values.
!
! Enter values with respect to datum arrays' coordinate system:
!
!CARTESIAN coordinates:
! X Y Z
!
-1.2653 2.6250 -2.6579
-1.2863 -2.6250 -2.6839
-2.6250 -1.2267 -2.6665
2.6250 -1.6155 -2.6591
-0.0223 -2.574903437024 -2.2512
-0.1108 2.572615081974 -2.2420
-0.0842 2.3549 -2.11001283161
-0.4211 1.8951 -1.848472440945
-0.4356 2.1471 -1.879908249409
0.0106 1.9038 -1.953086614173
0.1282968822162 2.0410 -1.7895

PC Dmis reads in this format :

XYZIJK
-3.85840,-4.75000,1.77550,0.00000,-1.00000,0.00000
3.74890,-4.75000,1.71970,0.00000,-1.00000,0.00000
-0.10920,4.75000,1.80940,0.00000,1.00000,0.00000
5.00000,3.52980,1.79580,1.00000,0.00000,0.00000
-5.00000,-3.63780,1.86760,-1.00000,0.00000,0.00000

[KenFarley]

Even with hand editing, how do you know what direction the vector is supposed to be (the I, J, K part of the PC-DMIS points)? I think those vectors are supposed to be pointing towards the surface to be probed, but I'm not sure. Could be the opposite for all I know. Either way, how are you to know without knowing what every point refers to? This could be particularly difficult if you're trying to measure a contoured 3D surface, where the normal vectors to the surface have varying components of I, J, and K.

There was some talk in years past about a CMM module for Creo which would output PC-DMIS programs, but I could never find anything that was real about it. So, I gave up and moved on. Maybe something has been done in recent times, but I don't have access to a programmable CMM machine anymore...

[KenFarley]

An additional point of interest. If I had to do this type of thing, and needed the DMIS file to be formatted in some specific way (i.e. with four decimal places, commas, etc.) I'd likely use Excel. You can do all the calculations you need, like using two points to calculate the unit vector at the surface point. Then you can use the TEXT() functionality of Excel to build the X,Y,Z,i,j,k lines as text. It's then really simple to copy and paste the results into a text file.