### Moving Path Lines

Once path lines are drawn on your screen, you can easily change the route the probe will follow by placing PC-DMIS into Translate Mode and clicking on a highlighted path line.

Note: If clicking on the line doesn't do anything, you may need to enable this functionality by marking the Path Line Moving Enabled check box on the Animation tab of the SetUp Options dialog box. If that check box is cleared then clicking on a path line will not display the Move Path Line dialog box discussed below. Instead, it will locate and highlight the underlying feature or hit for that path line segment in the Edit window. See the "Setup Options: Animation tab" topic in the "Setting Your Preferences" chapter.

When PC-DMIS detects that you have clicked on a path line, it will split the path line near where you clicked and display the Move Path Line dialog box, allowing you to insert a MOVE/POINT command at that location.

Move Path Line dialog box

The dialog box contains X, Y, and Z axis boxes, allowing you to type, if desired, a specific move point location, or you can use the Increment value with the small up and down arrows next to each axis box.

- When you click the up arrow, PC-DMIS adds the increment value to the current value.

- When you click the down arrow, PC-DMIS subtracts the increment value from the current value.

The selected path line is adjusted automatically in the Graphics Display window.

- Delete - Deletes the selected move point. This button only becomes active when you click on or near a move point located along the path line.

- Reset - Sets the path line back to normal as long as you haven't clicked OK or Apply.

- OK - Accepts your changes and inserts a MOVE/POINT command into the Edit window at the appropriate location to reflect the adjusted path line and then closes the dialog box.

- Apply - This functions the same as OK except that the dialog box remains open allowing you to continue working with additional path lines.

If you need to adjust the move point later, simply click on the point on the path line. The Move Path Line dialog box will appear again allowing you to change the values for the MOVE/POINT. Alternately, you can press F9 on the MOVE/POINT command inside the Edit window, and then change the values using the Move Point dialog box.

Tip: It's often handy to rotate the part while adjusting path lines. The Move Path Line dialog box permits you do to 2D and 3D rotate operations using the standard ALT + right-click drag and CTRL + right-click drag methods, respectively.

The only way to remove a path line modification is to delete the inserted MOVE/POINT command from the Edit window.

Movie Demo

In the small movie below you will see that the red lines are where PC-DMIS's Collision Detection functionality has detected sections of the path where the probe will collide with the part. Simply moving the affected path line sections and re-running the collision detection quickly clears up these problems. Notice how the operator can add move points and view the new path lines in 3D to verify that the move points were generated in acceptable locations: