“With PolyWorks/Inspector™ Version 9 we have fulfilled two major demands made by our extensive automotive and aeronautic customer base, namely the integration of non-contact and contact-based digitizing hardware within a unique software measurement platform and the necessity of effectively sharing measurement results through corporate networks,” said Marc Soucy, President of InnovMetric. 

In response to these expectations, InnovMetric developed a new plug-in architecture in PolyWorks that allows the integration of laser scanner systems as well as contact probes mounted on articulated arms. The PolyWorks/Inspector laser scanner plug-ins allows real-time scanning and real-time CAD comparison directly from within its user interface. With their embedded real-time filter, the PolyWorks plug-ins reduce inherent noise and quickly create a smooth representation of the scanned object. In addition to laser scanning, PolyWorks/Inspector V9 offers a full spectrum of traditional contact probing strategies, including compensated feature probing, real-time surface and boundary inspection, and direct access to probing when aligning to CAD, performing GD&T measurements. With these important new features, PolyWorks/Inspector V9 offers now the most advanced hybrid inspection solution on the market, capable of handling a multiplicity of digitizing methods within a single measurement software. 

PolyWorks/Inspector V9 also introduces unprecedented capabilities for producing 2D and 3D inspection reports and sharing these reports using IMView™, a new universal free inspection project viewer that can be installed on any workstation or laptop running professional Windows operating systems. With IMView, colleagues that need access to measurement results can open existing PolyWorks/Inspector projects and: 

• Visualize point clouds, CAD models, and color maps in 3D; 
• Easily navigate within results using a simple arrow-based navigation system and intelligent toolbars; 
• Perform basic measurements such as distances, angles, and cross-sections; 
• Create customized inspection reports. 

Furthermore, a new EZLayout report layout tool is now available for both PolyWorks/Inspector and IMView users and lets them quickly create their own inspection reports as they would do in a standard word processing tool. In addition to inserting their own text and images, users can easily drag & drop PolyWorks snapshots and measurement tables over an EZLayout sheet, in which they define the whole appearance of the inspection report. PolyWorks report objects within an EZLayout sheet remain accessible through the macro-programming language for automatic report generation. EZLayout reports can be directly printed, exported to PDF or HTML documents, or visualized within IMView. 

In addition to these major features, PolyWorks/Inspector™ V9 offers hundreds of interface and algorithmic enhancements, including: 

• Restructured menu bars and popup menus that improve clarity and reduce the learning curve; 
• A new alignment wizard that guides new users in their use of part-to-CAD alignment techniques; 
• A new profile gage tool that automatically measures fillet radius and step heights 
• A new universal flush & gap gage that intelligently adapts its measurement technique to the measured geometry 
• New fitting algorithms capable of correctly extracting measured features in case of severe deformations. 

“The new release of PolyWorks/Inspector will have a huge impact among our major corporate customers,” said Marc Boulanger, Director of Worldwide Sales at InnovMetric Software. “Our new report capabilities combined with the addition of a new free inspection project viewer will now enable large organizations to easily share quality-control information throughout various departments, from shop floor technicians to top managers. The integration of laser scanners and contact probes in PolyWorks will also ensure large organizations, which invest in various hardware technologies, that all point cloud processing tasks can be efficiently performed within a single measurement software,” he continued. 

PolyWorks Version 9 will be released in April 2005.