Mitutoyo America Corporation, a manufacturer of measuring tools and instruments, recently introduced the MiCAT Planner automatic measurement program generation software that uses 3D CAD models and Product and Manufacturing Information (PMI) to enable one-click automated generation of measurement programs. With this new program, a complex program that previously would have taken five hours to complete manually can now be completed in 15 minutes.

Aerospace, defense and medical device manufacturers will realize significant savings in time and money by making the automatic measurement program generation software MiCAT Planner a part of their digital product definition strategy.

“Mitutoyo’s MiCAT Planner software is changing the relationship between people and precision measurement with one click,” said Larry Maggiano, senior systems analyst at Mitutoyo America. “Our software program reduces programming time by up to 95 percent, compared with programming using general‐purpose software, for a significant potential increase in the efficiency of measurement processes.

“The coordinate measuring machine (CMM) is configurable virtually. A model-based definition (MBD) is imported, a set of rules is applied and matched to the configured CMM, and a measurement plan is generated. With one mouse click, a final probe path optimization is performed to reduce the number of probe changes and to minimize CMM movement to the lowest possible cycle time, and that part program is then automatically generated.”