NCG Appendix A – Vectors (I, J, K) in NC Gage
NC Gage uses vectors in several different areas of the software, so it is important to understand how they get inserted into measurement programs and what they mean.
When a function in NC Gage requires a vector or displays vector information, it is usually represented by the values I, J, and K.
These are the components in X, Y, and Z of a unit vector.
A unit vector describes how to move exactly 1 unit (mm or Inch) along a specific direction (vector) in space.
To understand this better, let’s look at this in 2D first:
2D Example of a Vector | ||
|---|---|---|
| The red arrow is a vector, it has length = 1. It describes a direction in the XY Plane that is 45 degrees away from the X axis. This can be described by the length of the vector in X and Y. These distances are called I, and J In this example I = 0.7071 and J = 0.7071 | |
Similarly, in 3D, I, J, and K are the lengths in X, Y and Z respectively.