Generation of fiducial sets

[Falling Man]

I noticed something over the last couple of probe sessions that confuses me.  I start the run and import the ascii position files - typcially one for my fixed standards and one for a lite element std block.  I confirm the positions of the fiducial and transform the coordinates.  One block will reference Fid 1 (St 0127 Fib1 Ni-std) and the other Fid 2.  I'm on the 2nd day of a run and have re-confirmed standard positions and re-standardized a number of times.  Now I see the the standards are reference to Fid 16 and Fib 21.  I occasionally get a message warning of conflicting Fiducial sets, but fortunately it doesn't prevent me from continuing with the analysis.  It's  like I'm generating a new set of fiducials every time I update a standard position.  I don't recall seeing this in the past.  Is there a new switch or option that I've missed?

[John Donovan]

I noticed something over the last couple of probe sessions that confuses me.  I start the run and import the ascii position files - typcially one for my fixed standards and one for a lite element std block.  I confirm the positions of the fiducial and transform the coordinates.  One block will reference Fid 1 (St 0127 Fib1 Ni-std) and the other Fid 2.  I'm on the 2nd day of a run and have re-confirmed standard positions and re-standardized a number of times.  Now I see the the standards are reference to Fid 16 and Fib 21.  I occasionally get a message warning of conflicting Fiducial sets, but fortunately it doesn't prevent me from continuing with the analysis.  It's  like I'm generating a new set of fiducials every time I update a standard position.  I don't recall seeing this in the past.  Is there a new switch or option that I've missed?

Hi Rick,
This is normal. 

If you re-confirm the fiducials on a standard mount, the software detects that as a *new* set of fiducials (for documentation purposes because the fiducials will have changed), and for reasons of data integrity it automatically generates a new fiducial set to reference subsequent acquisitions to.

If you merely update the standard positions themselves (as opposed to re-confirming the fiducials), this warning will not occur.  This latter course is what I usually do, because the only time one really needs to re-confirm the standard fiducials is when the standard mount has been removed from the sample holder and re-inserted. That is, the mount may have been rotated slightly, so one should re-confirm the standard fiducials.

Basically, I only do a fiducial confirm once when the standard mount is first loaded, and then for re-standardizing I simply update the standard positions, occasionally saving the updated positions back to the .POS file.

Hope that makes sense.
john