Telford-based Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence (www.hexagonmi.com) has launched PC-DMIS 2017 R1, the latest edition of its measurement software. R1 is short for ‘Release 1’, as there are two major releases scheduled for PC-DMIS this year, along with continued service pack updates.

PC-DMIS 2017 R1 makes it easier to find and learn about the new features and enhancements of the software by adding a ‘what’s new’ pop-up animation when starting the application.

The release notes have also been organised for easy access to the most important information, while application performance has been optimised for accelerating everyday tasks like opening and executing measurement routines, copy and paste functions, and file importing.

This latest release of PC-DMIS also previews a newly developed path optimisation tool that takes advantage of multi-threading on multi-core PCs.

Furthermore, QuickMeasure tools are extended to basic scanning operations, while a new measurement strategy for AutoFeature Plane allows discrete point selection.

Further enhancements focus on QuickFeature selection (which is now available in the live view on optical CMMs) and a number of enhanced point cloud tools.

These include: a new caliper tool for two-point checks that works like a physical caliper; and improved zoom and rotation for portable scanners, where scan data now flows more smoothly into the graphic window.

Also worthy of mention is the newly developed FeatureSensor mapping tool, which is designed to bring enhanced QuickFeature control to multi-sensor measurement routines.

Two further applications in PC-DMIS 2017 R1 are designed for shopfloor environments — Inspect and Notification Centre.

Inspect is a simple-to-configure platform to run PC-DMIS measurement routines and view reports, while Notification Centre helps the user to keep an eye on multiple inspection processes with ‘configurable warnings from embedded or external CMM lights, as well as multiple sound events’.