RPS Alignment

[BCopher]

I have been using Polyworks for about 3 months now and all my measurements thus far have been done using fixtures with tooling ball alignments (center points alignment).  However, I have some layouts coming up that I don't have fixtures for and will need to complete a RPS alignment.  Not sure how to do this in Polyworks.  I am assuming this is similar to a Iterative Alignment in PC DMIS.  Does anyone have a step by step how to for a RPS alignment?  I will be scanning the part in question.  This will also be a rather large part ( a headliner for a SUV). 

[jrayself]

Step by step wouldn't really work, as it's not a one-size-fits-all alignment.

However, the basic scenario would be to:
Create nominal features
Define measured features
Create Reference Points for said features
Set properties of each reference point
Perform Alignment

[jvenlet]

The procedure for this is different depending on scanning or probing.

Since you mentioned scanning, I will answer that.  It's not highly intuitive.  (Doing this from memory, as I am nowhere near our PolyWorks laptop).

First, scan the part and do a best fit.
In the RPS alignments, select RPS points.
Select features from the drop down, and the feature type from the selectable icons.
Hit next and select anchor for points, or pick from cad for other features.
Select your points, using the XYZ check boxes as you go to define what degrees of freedom get locked by the features.
As you create RPS features, nominal features should be automatically created.
When finished, select your features and Extract Measured.
Then, select the RPS features and in the RPS menu, select the option that is NOT Align by Probing (it should be the only other option).
The menu that comes up should have a box to check for "Use Constraints" (ignore it).
Hit done, Viola!  (note that it doesn't seem to properly iterate as PC-DMIS would, and you end up with, EG Datum B not at 0 deviation.

I don't know that there is any other way to achieve this without probing.  (If any of these steps isn't quite right, my memory isn't what it used to be  ;))