The basic idea of the operation of a vision system underlying this specification is using it for the inspection of particular products with settings contained in a recipe related to this product. Thus, there is a relationship between recipes and products. It may be an n:m relationship, meaning that one recipe can potentially be used for more than one product and that there may be more than one recipe for a specific product, e.g. depending on the circumstances of use.

The relationship between recipes and products will typically not be fixed or predefined as the set of available recipes and products to be processed will change over time. Therefore, some means must exist to establish links between products and recipes.

This specification uses different parameter combinations of the AddRecipe method of the RecipeManagementType to achieve the linking between recipes and products in the method-based approach and a LinkProduct method of the RecipeType in the address-space-based approach.

In the purely method-based approach, these links are only stored within the vision system and can be retrieved indirectly through the GetRecipeListFiltered method with appropriate filter settings.

In the address-space-based approach, the products a recipe is linked to are stored as a list within the RecipeType.