Basic EPMA

[John Donovan]

Julie Chouinard who teaches our CAMCOR interns microanalysis using the microprobe, is most of the way through teaching this quarter's student interns. Much of her teaching is in a classroom having the students using PFE on their laptops, in WDS *and* EDS "simulation" mode, which is very effective for getting the students up to speed on the software without wasting a lot of time on the instrument:

https://probesoftware.com/smf/index.php?topic=837.0

This simulation mode uses the Penepma Monte Carlo physics package to simulate WDS and EDS spectra so it is pretty realistic. We've been improving this simulation mode for her classes and earlier this week she suggested to me making a "basic EPMA" window so the students can more quickly understand the work flow.

This "always on top" window feature is now implemented in the latest version of Probe for EPMA. Just update from the Help menu. To use this new feature simply start Probe for EPMA, open a new or existing run, and click the File | Basic EPMA menu as seen here:



This window will now pop up. The basic workflow is top to bottom. Clicking on each button will open up the usual PFE windows and dialogs along with a few menus in roughly the right order for a basic EPMA quantitative run. I think this new window makes it easier to get familiar with the main/basic  functionality of the software, without new users getting overwhelmed by all the expert features and options available in PFE:



Of course once someone is comfortable with the basics, all those cool PFE features will be available just as before.  I thank Julie Chouinard for suggesting this, and Julien Allaz for making some additional suggestions and Gareth Seward for proposing similar ideas along these lines in the past (but I couldn't of a neat way to implement it until now). I hope you all will provide more feedback as you use it.

Note that if you hover your mouse over each button it will pop up the usual "tool tip help", but also mention where this particular functionality is normally accessed. Of course clicking the little Help buttons takes you to the PFE Reference manual which explains things in some detail.

[John Donovan]

Julie Chouinard pointed out yesterday that we had only enabled the Basic EPMA menu when Probe for EPMA was connected to the instrument (or in simulation mode), and she thought it would be helpful to have the Basic EPMA menu also available even when off-line for data processing.

So we made a few changes that disables the "real time" buttons when not connected to the instrument, but still allows the plot wavescan, analysis and output buttons as seen here:



Use the Help | Update Probe for EPMA menu to get this latest update.

[Anette von der Handt]

Hello,

I am also teaching my class right now and this feature was received very, very well. So, thank you for implementing this and thanks to Julie for suggesting this!!

And I know I had my chance to say something and missed it but based on my own workflow, I would actually say that "Standard assignments" and "Analytical conditions" should be yellow too, "Adjust count times" should be the fifth instead of the third button of the first block and I would also add "Output Images" as an option at the end.

But otherwise, it is perfection 

[John Donovan]

And I know I had my chance to say something and missed it but based on my own workflow, I would actually say that "Standard assignments" and "Analytical conditions" should be yellow too, "Adjust count times" should be the fifth instead of the third button of the first block and I would also add "Output Images" as an option at the end.

We can do that!   

[John Donovan]

Hello,

I am also teaching my class right now and this feature was received very, very well. So, thank you for implementing this and thanks to Julie for suggesting this!!

And I know I had my chance to say something and missed it but based on my own workflow, I would actually say that "Standard assignments" and "Analytical conditions" should be yellow too, "Adjust count times" should be the fifth instead of the third button of the first block and I would also add "Output Images" as an option at the end.

But otherwise, it is perfection 

The latest version of Probe for EPMA now has an improved Basic EPMA window as suggested by Anette von der Handt:

[John Donovan]

And just to make it all more "symmetrical" we added an Imaging button to the "Basic EPMA" window:



Ready to update now.

[Anette von der Handt]

Beautiful!

[emma_fisi]

Can't wait to try this with my next batch of users! Thanks for creating it   

[John Donovan]

I just wanted to bump this post up front because it isn't something that everyone is aware of, but can really help new users when they are learning the Probe for EPMA workflow...

https://probesoftware.com/smf/index.php?topic=1267.msg8939#msg8939