Met/Cal and VISA

[CalLabSolutions]

To bad you wont be there.. You will be missing a great paper on MET/CAL Programming..

Maybe next year..

Mike.

[scottbp]

It would be nice if they could incorporate MET/TEMP and Compass into MET/CAL. I think as of now they already communicate with MET/TRACK and use Crystal Reports, but it would be nice if they used procedures the same way as MET/CAL, e.g. if I could write or download a procedure to calibrate (for instance) a TI30 infrared gun using a blackbody and have it report the uncertainties, rather than having to manually configure MET/TEMP everytime a calibration is done and attempt to calculate the uncertainties by hand (not even knowing what all uncertainties go into an infrared calibration using a blackbody).

[CalLabSolutions]

Scott I agree, but currently they don't so we have created a set of drivers (sub procedures) to calibrate IR guns and and other items in MET/CAL.  We have a large librarty of Interchangable drivers we use in place of FSC to support Flexible Standards.  This has came in very handy as we have started updating the drivers to include expaded uncertanties. 

This issue of Cal Lab Magazine's then "Metrology 101" article is on IR Calibration.  Frank also did some uncertainty bugets that we plan on posting Online.

The e-copy of the magazine is already posted Online.. The printed copy is being mailed.. And If you plan on attending NCSLI, we will have copies at booth 203. 

[scottbp]

And If you plan on attending NCSLI, we will have copies at booth 203.

Cool... See you there. 

[CalLabSolutions]

....

• Out of curiosity, have you encountered many situations where more room is required in MEM2?  I have encountered less than a handful, and in these cases I was able to write the query response to a file and then read/parse the file to do what was needed.  For me, this has happened so rarely that I hadn't considered modifying MEM2.
  
• I haven't tried this, but I think reporting single-sided measurements along with their uncertainties can be performed by using a custom Crystal Report to suppress the fields you don't want.  For example, set a MEMCX negative tolerance to -9999U in the procedure, then instruct the Crystal Report to suppress tolerances that match -9999U?  I bet this can be done, but I would have to do some testing to confirm.
  

Adding 20 new features to any software package is going to delay its release.  I think MET/CAL 8 already has a firm release schedule, so I'm doubtful that 20 new features could be included in the initial release.  If the new feature set doesn't include something that people wanted, your idea is a good one for populating features in the next version.

Yes we also have a work around for these problems as well, any good programmer can figure out how to get it done.  But if you look back at this thread there are a lot of people saying they see no value in upgrading MET/CAL.  I have followed MET/CAL for years, been to several user group meeting.  Heard the requests, and seen the feature added with each update. 

Sense the IF FSC, I have not seen any upgrades that help me (as an advanced programmer).  And before that it was JMPL.. But I solved that problem with MATH MEM=MEM to keep my jump destinations the same as I edited code and the line numbers changed.

I don't have access to MET/CAL source code, so I am not 100% sure.  But I have requested a few features I believe are easily feature enhancements.  I don't want to delay 8.0 but I need a reason to tell my customers they need to upgrade to 8.0.

I hope some day we will have an opportunity to meet.   

[Hawaii596]

I don't have much time to read many of these threads.  Buffalo Wings asked if I was sure about the upgrade price for MetCal.  My understanding is that we have a couple of lab sites which run MetTrack and MetCal and have numerous licenses.  I am not involved in the details of these upgrades or purchases.  I just know that I was told that bottom line for all of the license we have would come to around $50K or so.  I can't substantiate it, that's what I was told.  I can get clarification if it sounds like someone is figuring something out incorrectly.  I think there are somewhere around 10 licenses (not exactly sure about that figure either).  If there is something seriously amiss about the dollar amount I mentioned, I'd like to figure it out.

[RFCAL]

I do not believe the $50K price.I think it is more around 10K.We also have 10 licenses and that was the price we were told.