Instrument Connection
Once an instrument model has been added to SA, it is then possible to establish a connection to a physical device.
There are two ways to connect. You can either press the connect button (or right-click on an instrument and select "Run Interface Module and Connect", which will immediately attempt to connect using the last saved settings or system defaults.
After a successful connection to an instrument is established and the connection has been closed, the connection settings are saved in a *.bin file per instrument model in the C:\Analyzer Data\Persistence directory. This ensures that the same connection can easily be established by pressing the connection button again.
To connect to a new instrument for the first time or to modify the connection settings use the drop down arrow beneath the Connect button to initiate this process.
For example. If you wanted to change the IP settings for a Laser Tracker, the following steps should be taken:
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Select Add and add the instrument model to SA. You may wish to roughly position this instrument model in your job file. This can be done by right-clicking on the instrument and selecting Drag Instrument Graphically.
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Use the dropdown list under Connect and select the connection interface to use. In this example we will connect to a Leica AT960 using the Laser Trackers interface
. Doing so will open the Connect to SpatialAnalyser dialog.
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As the name implies, this dialog gives you options for controlling your connection to SpatialAnalyzer. If you had 5 different instrument models in an SA job you could choose which model to connect to from the tree (but in the typical case, shown here, there will only be a single model shown). The check boxes offer options for clearing settings saved with the instrument model, and the Run Without Hardware option provides the ability to edit tooling or measurement profiles saved in a persistence file.
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Once you select an instrument model to connect to and press OK ... you will see the Connection dialog (Leica LMF Connection). This is where you can edit the IP address used to connect to the tracker.
The connection process for each instrument type will be a little different but the concept remains the same. For more details on your particular instrument refer to the Instrument Quick-Starts in the Instrument Manual or the SA community page.