CMM capabilities can be expanded with additional tools.
In a perfect world, or in a fully integrated manufacturing environment, metrology systems would be able to measure all necessary parameters in one pass, without error, and feed back results seamlessly to computer-integrated manufacturing networks, in the formats most useful for machine control and process management.

In a perfect world, or in a fully integrated manufacturing environment, metrology systems would be able to measure all necessary parameters in one pass, without error, and feed back results seamlessly to computer-integrated manufacturing networks, in the formats most useful for machine control and process management.

One aspect of that utopian vision is the ability of an automated instrument to measure a part, or family of parts, with one setup per part. This vision is what has been driving increased use of coordinate measurement machines (CMMs) and now, increasingly, toward the use of multisensor CMMs.