I'll preface this by saying that 95% of our parts are machined and have nice, orthogonal faces.

The past few days I've been getting parts that have no flat surfaces. They are essentially a contoured ridgeline, that will become a fixture for an internal job, so there are no drawings, and I'm just comparing to the CAD to check for fit/function.

My best thinking for alignment was just a manual CAD alignment (pick and measure points). Then I just measured a bunch of clouds, and did a Cloud-to-CAD deviation report. That seemed to work just fine.

On my next couple of parts I did the same, but after the cloud measurements, I tried the Cloud-to-CAD alignment, and my numbers seemed even better.

So I guess my question is, does this sound like I'm using the Cloud-to-CAD alignment as intended? Normally I would do a manual alignment (3-2-1 or the like) and then follow up with a DCC alignment. My thinking is the manual CAD alignment, followed by the Cloud-to-CAD alignment serves the same function?

Thanks