Wilcox measures the advantages of Datakit...

Wilcox Associates Inc. develops the PC-DMIS measurement and inspection software. It is one of the many subsidiaries of Hexagon Metrology group, including prestigious names like Brown & Sharpe, Leica, Mirai, and Romer, and whose catalogue includes CMMs, portable arms, vision, laser and probe sensors, and a range of metrology software.

Wilcox is one of the world’s leaders in measurement software with over 25,000 licences worldwide. Its portfolio includes a set of modules designed to enable users to collect data, evaluate the quality of manufacturing processes end-to-end, and manage and efficiently use all the inspection resources to optimise the manufacturing process. Its programs are used to define all required measurement operations, however complex the part geometry, and to generate in-process inspection reports.

With the launch of its global “EMS” (enterprise metrology solutions) strategy, Wilcox aims to deploy, and even standardise the use of its software on all existing measurement coordinate systems, enabling users to go seamlessly from drafting to manufacturing while maximally automating integration of the inspection process.

The first cooperative effort between Wilcox focuses on Inspection Planner an important EMS component. Inspection Planner plays a key role in automating the inspection process. With it, designers can build inspection requirements directly into their CAD models. When PC-DMIS reads in one of these models it can automatically extract the requirements and turn them into inspection routines. The software does all of the work and eliminates the problems associated with interpreting paper blueprints and manually entering date. As Rich Tischler, Wilcox Associates’ Development Manager explains: “This paperless process can work from complete construction data as intended by the designer and execute targeted inspections with maximum efficiency”.

EMS software typically relies on the high-quality interpretation of CAD data. To this end, Wilcox Associates has developed a number of solutions that address the specific capabilities of its customers and the functionality required of its products. However, in the case of Inspection Planner, they must support more than just geometrical information. The software has to be able to be able extract additional information from the models, and this is where DATAKIT shines. It extracts a full range of information from CATIA V5 models including both GD&T and FD&T. As Tischler says, “We use Datakit’s technology because it gets more geometry, annotations, tolerancing and dimensional data out of CATIA V5 models than the other solutions. We found out about Datakit from Mirai, another member of the Hexagon Metrology Group, which uses Datakit’s data exchange solutions. We allowed ourselves time to test the analysis. In our business we cannot afford approximation and we wanted to be 100% sure we made the right choice.”

The Datakit team is delighted to collaborate with Wilcox and enjoys doing business with the US vendor. CEO Francis Cadin points out that “IDs may well be hard to decrypt. With our commitment and the methods we are both using, we are progressing fast and expect to be announcing full integration very soon.”