Fadal Utilities - Finding center

[rwskinner]

I'm figuring out most of the offset utilities and I'm surprised on how well the 3 point circle works!
What is tripping me up, is trying to find the center point of something. Lets say I have a large plate approx 24" wide in the X, and I simply want to find the center of the X position.

I was trying the Midpoint utility but it does some really strange things, "or" I just don't know how to use it. I don't want it to jack with Y or Z but it does.

Any hints or pointers?

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[ianagos]

Use the midpoint utility and go in and delete all the values except the x value before you calculate and then insert. Or just for safety I always do the dimension I want with midpoint first then go back and do the others.

[rwskinner]

Actually, that is what I did but it sure doesn't seem like much of a short cut and I'm pretty sure that's not how Fadal expected it to be used.

[rwskinner]

Thanks ianagos. I wanted to phrase my reply differently because it seems harsh reading it again. I do appreciate your reply and that's pretty much what I've had to do. It's kind of a pia to do it that way but it works.
I was wondering why there weren't any actual documents on any of the fadal utilities so we knew what they were thinking. Some are great, then some make you scratch your head.

Kind of like when I put my MDI in G54, it should stay there regardless what I'm doing unless I specifically cancel it, but it doesn't. Next thing you know, the DRO's are back to showing machine coordinates.
I think that is what screws everyone up on the offsets for a Fadal. Mainly, what I'm used to is when in G54, I touch off on the X and zero it, then Y and Zero it, then touch the tool to the top of the work and zero it, it should zero all the DRO's and stay there unless I cancel the G54. Makes way more sense than constantly swapping back and forth. Now with some help here I understand it better, but it sure isn't as intuitive as most other machines.

It also seems that if your in G54 and setx,y,z it would only zero the coordinates for that work offset and do the math internally from G53 coordinates, not change all the offsets everywhere. Weird. Maybe I just don't totally understand why.

[ianagos]

Thanks ianagos. I wanted to phrase my reply differently because it seems harsh reading it again. I do appreciate your reply and that's pretty much what I've had to do. It's kind of a pia to do it that way but it works.
I was wondering why there weren't any actual documents on any of the fadal utilities so we knew what they were thinking. Some are great, then some make you scratch your head.

Kind of like when I put my MDI in G54, it should stay there regardless what I'm doing unless I specifically cancel it, but it doesn't. Next thing you know, the DRO's are back to showing machine coordinates.
I think that is what screws everyone up on the offsets for a Fadal. Mainly, what I'm used to is when in G54, I touch off on the X and zero it, then Y and Zero it, then touch the tool to the top of the work and zero it, it should zero all the DRO's and stay there unless I cancel the G54. Makes way more sense than constantly swapping back and forth. Now with some help here I understand it better, but it sure isn't as intuitive as most other machines.

It also seems that if your in G54 and setx,y,z it would only zero the coordinates for that work offset and do the math internally from G53 coordinates, not change all the offsets everywhere. Weird. Maybe I just don't totally understand why.

I would like to understand a bit more aswell I’ll be out of town for a bit but when I get back I’m gonna try to ask some of the people who made fadals. Because I hate how it won’t remember what offset you are at and it just defaults back to e0.