QUESTION
QC-CALC Real-Time is set to "Always Adapt." Why does it rename files when the characteristic count changes?
Specifically, there is a QCC file (example: widget.qcc) with 10 dimensions. When 11 are inspected, a new QCC file is created, and the old one is renamed to widget~10dims.qcc.
Answer
QC-CALC Real-Time adheres to the "Always Adapt" setting except in two cases. They are listed as follows:
- If you have duplicate Dimension Labels in the QCC file, QC-CALC Real-Time will automatically switch to the "Rename existing..." option. This is by design. QC-CALC must have unique dimension labels in order to adapt properly since "Always Adapt" allows you to insert features within the file (not just at the end). If the feature names are not unique, QC-CALC will not know how to handle them. As such, it reverts to the "Rename" method.
NOTE: The Tools > Detect Duplicate Dimension Labels menu was added in QC-CALC Real-Time 3.4 to help find non-unique labels. Run this menu on a part file that isn't operating as you would expect and it will point out any dimension labels that are duplicated.
- If you are using the Admin Tools in QC-CALC 3.2 and are part of a group that has 21 CFR Part 11 Auditing enabled, QC-CALC will use the "Rename existing QCC file, and create new file." method. This is by design and is due to security restrictions and the audit trail in this very specific mode.
NOTE: This has been changed in QC-CALC version 3.3 and higher, so the "Always Adapt" mode is now allowed in order to support MultiSource. We don't suggest using the "Always Adapt" mode when following the Part 11 guidelines, but it is now your choice to use it or not.
PLEASE NOTE
Please remember that the Feature Label is limited to 32 characters in all versions before QC-CALC 4.0 (which has a 100 character limit). If your labels are longer in any of those versions, they will automatically be truncated to 32 characters before being evaluated. As such, it may make labels that were otherwise unique into duplicates. Consider the following example:
MyVeryLongFeatureNameThatIsUnique1
MyVeryLongFeatureNameThatIsUnique2
Even though these features are technically unique, they will both be truncated to the following:
MyVeryLongFeatureNameThatIsUniqu
Unfortunately, they will become duplicates.
MORE INFORMATION
An easy way to test to make sure "Always Adapt" is functioning properly is to do the following:
- Go to Start > Programs > Prolink > Training CMM.
- Type a name for your part (i.e. "TestWidget") and specify 10 features.
- Click Inspect a couple of times and watch QC-CALC plot the 10 features.
- Change the number of features to 11 and click Inspect again.
QC-CALC should give you a red message at the bottom saying it adapted and added the 11th feature. All parts before the current one will be marked as deleted for the new dimension (since there was no data at that point). If you send less than the new 11 dimensions, the missing dimensions will be marked as deleted in the new record.