Hi John,
We're using a petrographical light microscope with a motorised stage to pre-program analysis points for our SX100, mainly polished thin sections (on 3x1" glass slides) of rock samples. The control software is called Digimax and made by Microbeam Services, an Australian company. It uses 2 reference positions for X and Y and calculates the Z plane from 3 points from the sample list. We use TEM grids which we stick on the samples as reference markers.
We have an conversion utility for PeakSight, but it is quite convoluted to import the coordinates in there and then add the points in PFE again point by point. As PFE already has a powerful fiducial coordinate import capability it would be great if we could import the Digimax coordinate files (ASCII text files with .DCD extension) directly into PFE. Other facilities have the Digimax system as well so it might be useful for other people as well.
Below are the first 10 lines from an example .DCD file:
0,0,0,none,No name-1,P1,1,1,1,
20894,33523,0,none,No name-2,P2,1,1,2,
21005,23559,0,none,M-18_Trem1-1,S1,2,1,1,
18497,24085,0,none,M-18_Trem2-2,S2,2,1,2,
13393,25852,0,none,M-18_Trem3-3,S3,2,1,3,
11649,27444,0,none,M-18_Trem4-4,S4,2,1,4,
19634,23847,0,none,M-18_Trem5-5,S5,2,1,5,
14721,27640,0,none,M-18_Trem6-6,S6,2,1,6,
19392,26963,0,none,M-18_Carb1-7,S7,2,1,7,
5413,26693,0,none,M-18_Carb2-8,S8,2,1,8,
The first two rows are the two reference points P1. The following S1.... are sample points.
Columns 1,2,3 are XYZ
Column 4 is the analysis setup, which can be pre-programmed.
Column 5 is the sample description
Column 6 is the sample number (P for reference, S for single point...)
Columns 7-9 are used as number within dataset etc and not critical.
The coordinates would need to be mirrored on import when coming from the light microscope (X becomes -X).
Would it be possible to create an import routine for these coordinate files?
Many thanks, Karsten