Module 2 Introduction

2. Measurement data that cannot be believed is worse than worthless. It usually costs a lot of
time and money. A metrologist’s code of ethics includes:
1. Be completely honest.
2. Be careful.
3. Be certain your measurements are correct.
4. Making a mistake is not terrible. Covering up a mistake is unforgivable.
5. No person knows everything. Pretending to know things, can be expensive.

3. Inside Spatial Analyzer, there are always several
different ways to accomplish the same task. This
course doesn’t attempt to teach every way to do
something. Based on many years of shared
experience, ATT has standardized those processes
and procedures that work best for our customers
and operators. You may know a different way to do
something. But, to maintain consistency, ATT
requires that you use the processes and procedures
that are taught in this course and documented in
the “W1034 ATT Rev A Laser Tracker Procedures
Specifications”.
Any changes to the procedures in the ATT Policy
document must be approved in advance by your
supervisor. Failure to do this is cause for corrective
action.
Inside this course, Procedures from the
W1043 document will be labeled
“ATT Policy.”

4. Among many other requirements, ATT has established policies for:
1. The information to be saved on the computer for each task
2. The folder and file names to be used for saving information on the computer
• ATT will assign a Work Order to each “job.”
• Folders with specific names must be created on the system computer to allow any ATT technician or
supervisor to easily locate and review the data that was created by any other technician.
• It also facilitates the creation of the Reports that will be provided to the customer after completion of
the job.
If the computer has already been setup by ATT Metrology Services, it will have a folder on the “OS(C):”
drive named “Customers.” Under this folder, a “WO#XXXXX” file must be created. All the other folders
and files will be created and stored inside that “WO#XXXX” folder.

5. For each Work Order (WO), these are the folders that must be created.
Catia Files
Customer Provided Data
Equipment
Excel Files
FOD Check List
Jpegs
Operator Checks
Photographs
Reports
SA Files
Step Files
Work Order
Windows permits more than one way to create these folders, but the way shown in this course will
cause Spatial Analyzer to create default locations for files. Step by step instructions follow.

7. EXERCISE
From the Desktop, open Spatial Analyzer
1. Click “File”
2. Click “Save As….”
3. Click “OS (C:)”
4. Double Click “Customers”

8. 5. Click on “New Folder”
6. Click inside the “New Folder” box,
(then type:)
7. “Work Order # - Customer – Part – Tool – Date”
8. Click anywhere on the screen to accept the new
folder name.
8. Double click the WO# folder name to open the
folder.

9. 9. Click on “New folder” then name the new folder
“Catia Files”
10. Click on “New folder” again and name the folder
“Customer Provided Data”
11. Click on “New folder” again and continue to
create each of the ATT Policy required folders.
Catia Files
Customer Provided Data
Equipment
Excel Files
FOD Check List
Jpegs
Operator Checks
Photographs
Reports
SA Files
Step Files
Work Order

10. 12. Click on the “SA Files” folder to open
13. Click on the “File Name” box and
name the SA file the same as the main
folder
“WO# - Customer – Part – Tool – Date”
14. Click “Save”

11. ■ Graphical View. A three-dimensional
rendered view of the current job.
■ Treebar. A hierarchical view of all entities in
the open job. For brevity this will typically be
referred to simply as the tree.
■ Report Bar. Displays important information
about the selected item and a convenient way
to generate reports.
■ Classic Tool Bar. The classic set of menus
provide access to all of the tools SA offers for
analysis and construction purposes.

12. • Each component comes in a separate
window which can be docked to the edge of
the screen or to the edge of another window.
• The components can be closed
independently to allow you to maximize your
screen space and to enable you to customize
the user interface for the specific task at
hand.
• A series of additional controls can also be added as needed, for applications such as
controlling an instrument or running a measurement script.
• At any point if you wish to display an additional toolbar you can right-click on any of
the toolbar headers and enable additional toolbars

13. The Graphical View
• The graphical view allows for graphical selection, provides visual
feedback, and allows you to visualize your measurements and
data
• It allows you to inspect, select, and operate on objects graphically. In
order to take advantage of this realistic view of your data, it’s
important to be able to navigate the view with ease.
• There are many ways to control the graphical view in SA. Chapter 5
in the SA User’s Manual discusses them all in detail. Here, we will
only learn a few.

15. Zoom To Zoom In and Out:
■ Hold down Ctr and click-drag the mouse up or
down, or
■ Scroll the mouse wheel up/down,
Autoscale Autoscale will zoom and center the view so that all visible
objects are displayed in the graphical view at once.
■ In the main toolbar, click the Autoscale button, or
■ Press Alt+A, the default keyboard shortcut
Pan To Pan the View:
■ Hold down the middle mouse button and drag the mouse in the
graphical view.
To Center the View on a Point:
■ Middle-click anywhere in the graphical view.

16. Rotate To Rotate the View (Freeform):
■ Hold down the right mouse button and drag
To Spin the View:
■ Hold down the Ctrl key and right-click-drag the mouse.
To Set a Specific Point as the Rotation Pivot Point:
1. On the Main Toolbar, click the View Rotation Center button.
2. 2. Click a point to set the pivot point
To Center the View on an Item:
■ Right-click the item in the tree or graphical view and select Center In
View from the context menu.
■ Alternatively you can use the Ctr+Middle Mouse button

17. Rendering Modes
SA provides four rendering modes for viewing geometry:
• Wireframe
• Hidden Lines Removed
• Solid + Edges
• Solid
The rendering modes are selected from the Main Toolbar.
• Wireframe Geometry is displayed as edges only, and hidden edges are visible

18. • Hidden Lines Removed Geometry is displayed as edges only, but hidden edges are
not displayed.
• Solid + Edges Solid surfaces are rendered in addition to edges.

19. • Solid Solid surfaces are rendered without edges
Surface Backsides Every surface in SA has a positive and a negative side.
In order to properly account for a probe’s target offsets, it is important that all
comparisons be performed against the positive side of a surface. In order to
determine the positive side, SA renders the negative side of surfaces in a special,
user-definable color (a light gray by default).

20. Labels Labels can be turned on in the
graphical view for displaying
names of points, objects, and
instruments.
This is often useful for visually
distinguishing different objects
but can become overwhelming in
complicated files—so you can
toggle label visibility.
To Toggle the Display of Labels:
■ Points and Instruments. Toggle View>Show Point Labels
■ Objects. Toggle View>Show Object Labels.

21. Visibility All of the items listed in the SA Treeview (except folders or collections)
can be shown or hidden. Hiding an item will remove it from the graphical
view and will dim the item’s name in the tree to gray.
Hiding items not in use, has a number of benefits; chief of which are:
• The graphical view becomes less cluttered, and it’s easier to work with the
items of interest.
• If many items are being displayed at once, hiding those not in use will
speed up the graphics considerably.
• Graphical selection becomes easier, because there are less items to pick
incorrectly.

22. Creating a “new” file in SA does not necessarily mean that you’re working
with a blank slate. Even a completely new file has at the very least a
collection, a coordinate frame, and myriads of settings for anything from
colors and units to decimal precision. If you are working from a “file
template,” you will normally use the “Open File” option, rather than the “New
File” option.
4. File Setup
In most cases, a single SA job file will be used for even very large
measurement jobs. Some of these files will become large and complex,
but it may be important that all the data remains in the same job file. In
a few cases, multiple job files may be used on the same project.
Typically, a customer requirement will determine that, and your
supervisor will make that decision.
The following video goes through the steps for creating a new
SA job file that conforms to ATT Policy.

24. Instructor Demo
Exercise

25. 5. CAD Import
In most cases, you will be taking measurements for comparison to a
CAD model. Before measurement are taken, the CAD model should
be imported into the SA job file.
Typically, the CAD files we will import will be in one of several
“Standard CAD formats.” “Direct CAD Access” is available in
SA, but is not typically required.
Standard CAD file formats supported in SA include:
• STEP
• IGES
• VDA
• SAT

27. Instructor Demo / Discussion
Exercise

28. 6. Introduction to Frames
In three-dimensional space, the Cartesian coordinate system (frame)
is based on three mutually perpendicular coordinate axes: the x-axis,
the y-axis, and the z-axis. The three axes intersect at the point called
the origin.
SpatialAnalyzer allows you to create a virtually unlimited number of
coordinate frames (referred to as “frames” in SA), each representing a
different aspect of your job that is important to you.
It is important to recognize that changing a coordinate frame does not
physically move anything in space—it merely results in a change in the
reference system used to represent that same position and orientation. This
allows you to take measurements in any arbitrary default coordinate system
and represent them in a system that better describes the data.
Note: an instructor lead discussion of frames should take place here; while the instructor
gets a good understanding of the knowledge level of each of the trainees. The inability to
grasp 3D frames is VERY limiting to metrology. (This note will be moved to the instructor
notes before course publication.)

29. SA has a concept known as the working frame. The working frame is a coordinate frame through which all
data is represented or mapped. Put another way, it is the active coordinate frame. Any coordinate frame
can be made the working frame, and when a frame is working, all data (point coordinates, delta values,
rotations) is represented in SA with respect to that frame.
7. Introduction to the Working Frame
There are many ways to create new frames in SA. It is a
critical skill in metrology. Expect to incorporate frame
construction and changing working frames in many of the
other course topics.