Notes on XYZ Files

PC-DMIS can read in an .xyz text file that contains XYZ (and possibly IJK) data. The file should contain the nominal (theoretical) inspection points that need to be measured.

The file must follow these rules:

  1. Columns 1 - 6 in the first line of the file must contain the characters "XYZIJK" (without quotes). PC-DMIS uses this sequence of characters as a keyword to distinguish this file type from DES and IGES files. It must be in capital letters.

In the first line of the file:
Col. 1 = X
Col. 2 = Y
Col. 3 = Z
Col. 4 = I
Col. 5 = J
Col. 6 = K

  1. If the file contains metric data, columns 11 - 16 of the first line must contain the word METRIC. That is:

Col. 11 = M
Col. 12 = E
Col. 13 = T
Col. 14 = R
Col. 15 = I
Col. 16 = C

The default, if the METRIC keyword is not present, is INCH.
The rest of the first line should be blank

  1. Each line thereafter must contain three to eight floating point numbers separated by a comma.

For example, suppose your XYZIJK file looked like this sample:

Sample XYZIJK file in a text editor

Once imported, it produces this result in the Graphic Display window:

Graphic Display window that shows the data imported from the sample XYZIJK file