Output coordinate system

While search regions are usually fixtured, step results are by default produced with respect to the absolute coordinate system. It is possible and sometimes useful to have the results of a step returned relative to another coordinate system, frame, or fixture.

Note that in Matrox Design Assistant, the terms "coordinate system", "frame" and "fixture" are synonyms.

In a Metrology step

If you need metrology results relative to a certain position, use the global frame, which is a reference frame available in every Metrology step. The global frame is set to the absolute coordinate system by default. However, you can reposition the global frame to a required position (a fixture on a part, a datum in a reference drawing), and then retrieve results relative to the global frame.

When you access metrology feature results, you can choose from 2 available result sets: RelativeToGlobalFrame and RelativeToImage (the default). RelativeToImage results are relative to the absolute coordinate system.

Note that you should not use the global frame to set features or search regions relative to a certain position; use fixture outputs from other steps or local frames for this purpose.

In other analysis steps

In most other analysis steps (all but the PatternMatching step and the ModelFinder step), the frame used to return results is set by the Output coordinates input. The default output coordinate system is the absolute coordinate system, but you can set it to any other fixture.

In any other case

If there's any other case where you need to change a position or orientation from one coordinate system to another, you can use the TRANSFORMCOORDINATES function.