Welcome to the Bluehill User Community Blog! The goal of this site is to provide Instron's Bluehill users with a central location to search for FAQ'S, how-to's and useful tips and tricks. If you don't find what you are looking for - just ask! If you have any recommendations for how we can improve our site - let us know that too!

Thursday, July 21, 2011

The data acquisition challenge

Earlier this week I was at a customer site and the test engineer posed a very important question about data acquisition. The question is how can you acquire closely spaced data only when you need so that the data file doesn't become too large with unnecessary data points. Are you up for the challenge?


Friday, July 8, 2011

Cheat sheet for piping data in Bluehill

We recently moved to a new place and one of the things I am still doing is assembling furniture. You can't get it right the first time without a detailed drawing. I don't think its any different with testing software. So drawings like these inspired me to create one for Bluehill.

Friday, July 1, 2011

Not good with numbers? Use Expressions

Let's face it, an engineer or technician can never escape Math (Mathematics) no matter how hands-on he or she is. The frustrating part about Math in engineering is that you need to know the right "formula". But once you have the right formula, Math is out of the way; you can plug the numbers and can get closer to the physical reality. With Bluehill 2 there was yet another step in using a formula that Bluehill 3 eliminates: creating variables.

Variables are the building blocks of a mathematical relationship (aka expression) and in Bluehill 2 you had to add the variables you want to use in an expression before building the expression. In Bluehill 3 we eliminated this step for the most part, by creating ready to use variables. Any numerical entity that is defined in a test method is automatically available for expression building. This includes specimen dimensions, numerical user inputs and physical measurements.

How can I start using Expression Builder in Bluehill 3


The most straight forward use of Expression Builder is to create user calculations. To create your own calculation (hope you have the right formula), click on Calculations on method navigation, and add a User Calculation with a unique name: