Patent ID: 7877225

Claim:
Method to determine measuring points on an object, comprising the steps of: a) providing a computerized processor with a graphical computer model of a physical object; b) through a user interface, providing said processor with a designation of multiple measuring points of the physical object in the graphical computer model until a number of said measuring points has been designated in order to define the position and orientation of the object with regard to a reference coordinate system, and executing a computer program in said processor to automatically determine when said number of measuring points has been designated, c) after said number of measuring points has been designated to define the position and orientation of the object with regard to the reference coordinate system, designating an additional measuring point of the object in the graphical computer model in said processor, and automatically checking in the execution of the computer program as to whether the position and orientation of the object can be determined more precisely with regard to the reference coordinate system using the additional measuring point by, generating a Jacobian matrix J J = ∂ ( S 1 · F ⁡ ( x → 0 , x → ⁢ ⁢ data 1 ) S 2 · F ⁡ ( x → 0 , x → ⁢ ⁢ data 2 ) … S n · F ⁡ ( x → 0 , x → ⁢ ⁢ data n ) ) ∂ x wherein F ⁡ ( x → 0 , x → ⁢ data ) = ( S ⁢ ⁢ 0 ) ⁢ ( T ⁡ ( x ) · ( xdata 1 xdata 2 xdata 3 1 ) ) wherein T is a transformation matrix that transforms coordinates of the object into coordinates of a coordinate system that is associated with a measurement device used for the measuring points of the object; {right arrow over (x)}data 1; 2; . . . , n are the coordinates of the measuring points in the computer model; S is a selection matrix that depends on measurement axes of the measurement device ( 10 ); and x → 0 = ( 0 0 0 0 0 0 ) and checking the rank of the Jacobian matrix J and selection of measuring points until the rank of the Jacobian matrix J is at least equal to the number of possible degrees of freedom of the object; d) providing a humanly perceptible indication from said processor at said user interface when using the additional measuring point for the determination of the position and orientation of the object with regard to the reference coordinate system can be more precisely determined using the additional measuring point; e) providing said processor with a predetermined tolerance and repeating steps c) and d) and after each repetition, automatically checking in said processor whether said position and orientation of the object have been determined better than said predetermined tolerance and providing a further humanly perceptible indication from said processor at said interface when said position and orientation of said object have been determined better than said predetermined tolerance.