Using USB Faro Arm to Create Basic Point Clouds in Catia

Good day all,

I recently acquired a new-to-me Faro Arm platinum circa 2004. It connects via USB to my laptop.

I want to use this to reverse engineer parts by taking touches on the part and importing the corresponding points to CAD.

Im using Catia V5R17. I was on the phone with Faro for quite a while and they had me install a trial version of Cam 2 Measure. This software however is only intended to inspect parts already in production. It cannot seem to just export points from the part to use to actually create the CAD model in the 1st place.

The rep from Faro said there is a software called Point2Cad which can do this but that seems only to be for SolidWorks, which wont work with Catia.

So, what I need is a basic software package that integrates with Faro Arm USB and will allow me to take manual touches on a part and import those points into Catia V5R17.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks,

To be fair, if you could get something that would export to excel, then you could import to Catia from there but what software that is, I don't know but it may give you a few more options.

a2t said:

Good day all,

I recently acquired a new-to-me Faro Arm platinum circa 2004. It connects via USB to my laptop.

I want to use this to reverse engineer parts by taking touches on the part and importing the corresponding points to CAD.

Im using Catia V5R17. I was on the phone with Faro for quite a while and they had me install a trial version of Cam 2 Measure. This software however is only intended to inspect parts already in production. It cannot seem to just export points from the part to use to actually create the CAD model in the 1st place.

The rep from Faro said there is a software called Point2Cad which can do this but that seems only to be for SolidWorks, which wont work with Catia.

So, what I need is a basic software package that integrates with Faro Arm USB and will allow me to take manual touches on a part and import those points into Catia V5R17.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks,

Click to expand...

Matt J said:

To be fair, if you could get something that would export to excel, then you could import to Catia from there but what software that is, I don't know but it may give you a few more options.

Click to expand...

Right, I just need something that can see the faro arm usb and allow me to gather points and save as igs or excel. That software must exist ...

Point data should be output in a text containing file. You would probably only need excel to change delimiting if needed...otherwise you should be able to directly import the points. Now, creating surfaces from those points is another ball game.

goooose said:

Point data should be output in a text containing file. You would probably only need excel to change delimiting if needed...otherwise you should be able to directly import the points. Now, creating surfaces from those points is another ball game.

Click to expand...

any suggestion on basic software that can gather points ? im well versed created surfaces in catia. I just need the points ...

If you're going to cross-post you should at least link the other post so that others can see what's already been discussed.

https://www.practicalmachinist.com/...o-arm-create-basic-point-clouds-catia-352626/

The Faro uses a proprietary driver interface, and there is a limited number of softwares that can interface to it.

If you don't want to spend money because this is just an occasional thing, Autodesk's subscription model might actually serve you well in that you could get PowerInspect on and as-and-when basis for little outlay.

This is probably over my head, but cant you just create your geometry, surface, etc in cam2 and import and manipulate file in Catia. The stuff I do is dead simple, but I use an older faro arm silver with cam2, create wire frame, surface etc. and manipulate in MC. I guess I get away with this because the geometry Im dealing with is just simple, but curious why you cant create a surface in cam2 and manipulate it in Catia?

cpifer3 said:

This is probably over my head, but cant you just create your geometry, surface, etc in cam2 and import and manipulate file in Catia. The stuff I do is dead simple, but I use an older faro arm silver with cam2, create wire frame, surface etc. and manipulate in MC. I guess I get away with this because the geometry Im dealing with is just simple, but curious why you cant create a surface in cam2 and manipulate it in Catia?

Click to expand...

In the first thread OP said that he couldn't take points in Cam2 without importing a part model first. I am not familiar with Cam2 but a quick read of the Cam2 page suggests that that is a limitation of what they call the "Probing" edition. "Full" edition appears to support creating and exporting point clouds.

You're the second poster to say that you are taking points and exporting using Cam2. OP said that even Faro support told him that was not possible...

OP said that he is using the full version, but it seems more likely to me that he is using the Probing edition. Does that seem likely to you?

gregormarwick said:

In the first thread OP said that he couldn't take points in Cam2 without importing a part model first. I am not familiar with Cam2 but a quick read of the Cam2 page suggests that that is a limitation of what they call the "Probing" edition. "Full" edition appears to support creating and exporting point clouds.

You're the second poster to say that you are taking points and exporting using Cam2. OP said that even Faro support told him that was not possible...

OP said that he is using the full version, but it seems more likely to me that he is using the Probing edition. Does that seem likely to you?

Click to expand...

I would think you may be correct, I have never imported a part model. I am by NO means a seasoned user of the faro arm, but Ive always been able to retrieve the geometry I was after off of sample parts and then manipulate it in MC to then tool path over etc

Ok Ive figured this out with some help from microscribe tech support. I will document how this works for others.

1. I couldn't figure out how to use Cam 2 to make touches and export them. Its an extremely bulky software, took hours to install, and just couldn't seem to make basic touches and export the points. Its probably possible, but software isn't set up for that.

2. With help from microscribe, I downloaded trial of Rhino 6.0. This costs about $1000 for a license so not terrible esp. considering the limitless costs common to this arena.

3. Using Rhino, there is a multiple point command which basically lets you run all over the part just clicking the green faro button to gather as many points as you wish. This is all after of course you locate the faro coordinate system the way you want it.

4. From there you can export as igs.

5. From there, you can import igs to Catia using the DSE workbench cloud import feature.

6. From there you can then export the cloud to ascii.

**** it may be possible to just save the Rhino points as ascii to begin with, and thus skip steps 5-6 ? Not sure I might try it. ****

7. From there, you open the ascii in excel, delete all but 3 columns (xyz). You will need to use the excel feature text to columns to break out the column into 3 columns and delete all else other than just the xyz coordinates.

8. Now, open the file GSD_PointSplineLoftFromExcel.xls which is located somewhere in the Catia command files which get installed during software installation - “C:\Program Files\Dassault Systemes\B26\win_b64\code\command” (or similar, just search for the file name in there you will see it).

9. Take all your xyz points, cut/paste them into that Catia xls file. Turn on developer script so you can see the Macros button.

10. Make sure your Catia file is still open, go to the Part Design Workbench. You will still see your igs point cloud, usually in green in there. But we all know that is just a dumb cloud, you cannot really do anything other than look at it at this point.

11. Run the Macro in excel called Feuil1.Main.

12. Bam ! The entire igs cloud will now have real Catia points associated with each. You are now free to build planes, lines, splines, measure, whatever you want to do, they are now Catia construction points.


This is super powerful, and allows you to take a part, manually touch it with a CMM, and render the incoming data such that its useful to actually construct a part.


More pics and data here -

Creating Multiple Points in CATIA V5 using Microsoft Excel

one more thing here - for manual cmm's like faro arm and microscribe, you can only really touch 1 part.

However, if you are running a traditional program driven CMMs like a Brown and Sharp that is programmed off PCDMIS or such, you can actually run your point scan over multiple parts. Then, you can take your xyz data and average them, and really get an accurate tolerance range across as many parts as you want to measure.

Ive done this before reverse engineering aerospace parts. you can even color each point cloud differently and take screen shots for reports. We used to have to do this to show the FAA engineers that our tolerance range selected was within the tolerance range measured on the OEM parts. Very cool way to come up with geometry when building for instance airframe skins for aircraft that are no longer in production.

Just a neat tip I thought I would pass on. I had unfortunately gotten into more of a tech sales role and hadn't done the engineering and CAD since about 2010, this all slipped my mind …

Sorry I'm late to the party. I used to do this in Mastercam about 17 or 18 years ago. There was software that would output the touch coordinates as text, and you could configure how it was output to match your CADCAM's input requirements. So I'd tell Mastercam to do something like "Create Line Endpoints" and then make two touches with the Faro arm, or "Create Arc 3-Points" and make three touches. Worked great, and made clean wireframe geometry that I could then turn into a complete model. This was when I was working for Prototek Engineering (Mastercam reseller), so if you contact them they might be able to help you out. I reverse engineered a compound bow cam this way for a customer.

Nice, sounds like another good solution.