Patent ID: 7039550

Claim:
A surface scan measuring instrument comprising: a scanning probe that has a measurement point for approaching or contacting a workpiece surface and a detection sensor for detecting a relative position of the measurement point and the workpiece surface along a normal direction of the workpiece surface, the scanning probe scanning the workpiece surface while keeping the relative position of the measurement point and the workpiece at a preset reference position; a moving unit for moving the scanning probe; an operation unit that has a manual operation member for instructing an input of a desired direction and a desired size with a manual operation; an instruction vector commander that generates an instruction vector having the direction and the size instructed by the manual operation member within a predetermined limited processing time from the input instruction; a relative vector commander that automatically generates a relative vector having a size of a deviation of the relative position of the measurement point and the workpiece surface relative to the reference position and a direction of the normal direction of the workpiece surface based on a value detected by the detection sensor; a scanning vector commander that generates a scanning vector by combining the instruction vector and the relative vector; and a drive controller for controlling a drive of the moving unit according to the scanning vector.