Manufacturers working from engineering drawings may need to record hundreds of dimensional measurements on a single inspection. Quality Inspector supports several ways to organize these measurements, depending on how often dimensions and tolerances are reused.

For drawing-based inspections, create the Quality Inspection Template with Template Type = Balloon / Bubble. This template type enables the Balloon No./Characteristic No. and Characteristic Designator fields on the template lines. This is also the approach documented in Create and Use a Balloon/Bubble Template in Quality Inspector.

Approaches for dimensional measurements

There are several ways to configure dimensions such as:

• .125 ± .002
• .125 -.002 / +.010
• .125 ± .001
• .125 -.001 / +.008

Converting Drawing Tolerances to Pass Conditions

Quality Inspector pass conditions use Business Central filter expressions. For dimensional tolerances, calculate the minimum and maximum acceptable values and enter them as a range using the Business Central .. interval operator.

For a symmetric tolerance, subtract and add the same tolerance value to the nominal dimension. For an asymmetric tolerance, subtract the specified lower tolerance and add the specified upper tolerance.

The .. operator includes both ends of the range, so 0.123..0.127 accepts values from 0.123 through 0.127, inclusive. Microsoft documents this syntax in Sort, search, and filter data in lists, reports, or XMLports.

Create separate Quality Inspection Fields

You can create a Quality Inspection Field for each measurement or commonly used combination of measurement and tolerance.

This can be useful when the same specifications are reused across many inspection templates. Configure the appropriate grade conditions on the field, then add the field to the required Balloon / Bubble templates.

When a field is added to a template, its grade conditions are copied to the template line.

Reuse fields and define tolerances on the template

A Quality Inspection Field can also represent a reusable type of measurement, while the actual tolerance is configured on each template line.

For example, the same decimal measurement field could be added several times to a Balloon / Bubble template, with each occurrence identified by its:

• Balloon No./Characteristic No.
• Description.
• Unit of Measure.
• Pass or grade condition.

Quality Inspector stores grade conditions for the individual template line, allowing the conditions copied from the field to be changed for that specific characteristic.

For example, separate template lines could use pass conditions such as:

0.123..0.127

or:

0.123..0.135

See Configure Grades for information about defining conditions at the field and template levels.

Calculate tolerances from item or specification data

If nominal dimensions or tolerances are already stored elsewhere, pass conditions can be calculated dynamically instead of entering fixed values on every field or template.

Quality Inspector can reference:

• Fields on the Item Card using [Item:FieldName].
• Item Attributes using [Attribute:AttributeName].
• Values from other Business Central tables using Lookup(...).
• Numeric and embedded expressions to calculate lower and upper limits.

For example, a nominal value and separate lower and upper tolerances can be used to produce an allowable range automatically.

See:

• Reference a Field from an Item Card or an Item Attribute in Allowable Conditions or Pass Conditions
• Look up Specifications from Another Table when Creating Quality Inspection Tests

Choosing an approach

These approaches can be combined. For example, commonly reused dimensions may have dedicated Quality Inspection Fields, while drawing-specific characteristics use reusable fields with conditions entered at the Balloon / Bubble template level. Where dimensional specifications already exist in Business Central or another specification table, expressions can reduce duplicate configuration.