PRE-REQUISITES

You should be running QC-CALC Real-Time and QC-CALC SPC on a network and saving your QCC files from Real-Time to an accessible share. You should place all QCC files into the same directory and not use subdirectories for Monitoring to work properly.


INTRODUCTION

Monitoring is a powerful, but often misunderstood or unknown feature of QC-CALC SPC.
It is a built-in feature of QC-CALC SPC designed to monitor and display changes in QC-CALC database files. This feature is available if you are using QC-CALC RT to read and display your inspection results and want to display the real-time plots on another computer.

As data is added to the files you’re monitoring, the screen (plots or spreadsheet) is updated with the new data. These are live, local screens that mimic the distant QC-CALC program usually found in the Quality lab. You can monitor a single file or a group of files. Another option allows you to monitor a directory and automatically switch to the current file that is being written to by the QC-CALC Real-Time on the inspection machine. See

Monitoring Groups in QC-CALC SPC for more details.


STEPS ON CMM PC (QC-CALC Real-Time)

If the PC you just installed QC-CALC into is a CMM, Video system, or a QC-Gage data collection with QC-CALC, do the following and repeat for each machine you want to monitor:

1. Run QC-CALC Real-Time by double clicking the desktop icon.
2. Select Tools > Optionsfrom the menu.
3. Select Data Collection > Actions in the Settings menu
4. Check the Path to Save new .QCC Files: checkbox and browse to the S:\SPC\Data\ folder or other network share.
5. Click OK.

This setting will force QC-CALC to always save inspection data to the S:\SPC\Data\ drive making it available for all other QC-CALCs to read. You should copy all existing .QCC files (if you have any) from your local data area to make it available to others.


STEPS ON REMOTE PC (QC-CALC SPC)

If the PC you just installed QC-CALC into is in the office or the shop floor for Monitor display, do the following:

1. Run QC-CALC SPC by double clicking the desktop icon.
2. Select File > Open from the menu and select your S: drive.
3. Now open any .QCC file you find there. There should be some files if your CMM has been collecting data. If not, you can copy the sample files shipped with QC-CALC found in the QC-CALC data folder on your C: drive.
4. Click Tools > Enable Monitoring.

That's it. From this point forward, any file opened on this computer will automatically update the live screen when new data is added to the .QCC file from another QC-CALC.