Interpolated Profile File Format (.asc)

General Information

Motion Sizer can export cam diagrams to .asc files. Motion Sizer can import .asc files as user-defined motion profiles.

.asc files describe cubic spline interpolated profiles.

Properties of .asc Files

o.asc files are text files with UTF-8 encoding.

oThe end of line is encoded in Windows style by a CR LF (carriage return, line feed).

oThe dot (.) is used as decimal separator character for numbers. Double precision is used, as defined in https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/678hzkk9.aspx. Exponent notation is allowed (for example, 1.91446788459615E-05).

o.asc files encode a position profile.

They provide a cubic spline interpolation of a profile of equidistant position values.

.asc File Structure

An .asc file consists of two types of data:

oHeader data in lines 1...10.

oProfile data in lines 11 and following.

.asc File Example

In the following .asc file example:

oHeader data is available in lines 1...10.

oProfile data is available in lines 11 and following.

Line	Content
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16	Header=SoMachine Motion Builder Version=4.2 YFactor=30 XFactor=360 YOffset=-10 XOffset=5 StartSlope=0 EndSlope=0 InterpolationMode=1 CamPoints 0 1.91446788459615E-05 7.65772493088808E-05 0.000172293313276365 0.000306285540935095 0.00047854367133251

Header Data

The header data in lines 1...10 of each .asc file contains the following information:

Line	Type of information	Admissible values	Description	Example
1	Software name	Text	Identifies the software that was used to create this .asc file.	Header=Motion Sizer
2	Software version	Text	Identifies the software version that was used to create this .asc file.	Version=1.0
3	Y factor	YFactor= followed by a decimal number.	Identifies the default scale of the y axis. It is applied by default to a segment when this profile is used as a user-defined profile and when you import a cam diagram from this .asc file.	YFactor=100
4	X factor	XFactor= followed by a decimal number.	Identifies the default scale of the x axis that is used to determine the x coordinate of the segment end point when you import a cam diagram from this .asc file.	XFactor=360
5	Y offset	YOffset= followed by a decimal number.	Identifies the default y coordinate of the start point of the cam segment when you import a cam diagram from this .asc file.	YOffset=0
6	X offset	XOffset= followed by a decimal number.	Identifies the x coordinate of the start point of the cam segment when you import a cam diagram from this .asc file.	XOffset=0
7	Start slope	StartSlope= followed by a decimal number.	Identifies the slope of the position profile at the first point of the profile. The value of this parameter is only evaluated if InterpolationMode=1 is used (refer to line 9 of the .asc file).	StartSlope=0
8	End slope	EndSlope= followed by a decimal number.	Identifies the slope of the position profile at the last point of the profile. The value of this parameter is only evaluated if InterpolationMode=1 is used (refer to line 9 of the .asc file).	EndSlope=0
9	Interpolation mode	InterpolationMode= followed by one of the following values: o0 for natural spline o1 for spline on base of the slope of the borders o2 for periodic spline	Defines how the edge condition at the start point and end point of the profile is resolved. oNatural spline: The curvature at the start point and at the end point is 0. oSpline on base of the slope of the borders: The values for the slope at the start point and at the end point are defined by the values given in lines 7 and 8. oPeriodic spline: The same slope and curvature apply at the start point and at the end point.	InterpolationMode=1
10	Separator	CamPoints (Only this text is allowed.)	Identifies the end of the header and the beginning of the profile data.	CamPoints

Profile Data

Lines 11 and following until the end of the .asc file contain the profile data. Each profile value is provided as a decimal number, followed by a CR LF.

.asc files exported from Motion Sizer contain exactly 360 profile values.

Motion Sizer allows you to import .asc files containing a maximum of 1000 profile values.

Each profile value represents a y value of the profile, normalized to a range from 0 to 1. The parameters YFactor and YOffset provided in the header data restore the relation to the actual position range.

Profile values are spaced equidistantly along the x axis. The parameters XFactor and XOffset provided in the header data restore the relation to the x values of the profile.