Wish List for PFE Features

[Mike Matthews]

Hi John,

A couple of requests/questions: i) In the Plot window it's really useful that you display relative offset of the cursor from the peak position, but would it be possible to also display the cursor's absolute position in spectrometer units, kV and nm? ii) Is there a way to stop my off-line installation of PfE asking if I want to connect to the instrument every time I launch it? It's only a minor niggle, but I'm never going to be in a position to connect my mac at home to a probe. Is there a switch in Probewin.ini for this?

Mike

[Anette von der Handt]

Hi John,

A couple of requests/questions: i) In the Plot window it's really useful that you display relative offset of the cursor from the peak position, but would it be possible to also display the cursor's absolute position in spectrometer units, kV and nm? ii) Is there a way to stop my off-line installation of PfE asking if I want to connect to the instrument every time I launch it? It's only a minor niggle, but I'm never going to be in a position to connect my mac at home to a probe. Is there a switch in Probewin.ini for this?

Mike

Hi Mike,

I can help you with the first one and would like to weigh in with the second one.

You already have the possibility to show absolute spectrometer positions. It is a little check box in the plot window (it always is ) See attached screen shot.

For the connect to machine at start-up. I like it. If I say no, I can just process data, even if it has been acquired on a different machine (especially important as I am now switching to a new machine). But if I say yes (and have the correct set-up files for my machine), I can set-up my entire run and play with off-line positions etc. without having to be one the machine. Can just walk to the machine and copy the file to the computer and start. I think it is also needed to run the software in simulation mode (as that option is triggered in Acquisition Options in the Acquire! window) which I used quite a bit so far and not only for teaching.

[Probeman]

Hi Mike,
Anette is exactly correct.

The EDS and WDS simulation modes in Probe for EPMA are based on Penepma Monte Carlo simulations with some additional WDS artifacts added in. Therefore they are surprisingly realistic. One can for example set up one's run and pick backgrounds all in simulation mode.  Then simply copy the MDB file to the probe computer, re-peak the spectrometers, check the PHAs and you're ready to go!

But like Anette we use the simulation mode mostly for teaching students and visitors.

Here is a comparison between an actual and simulated WDS scan near the Ar absorption edge using the simulation mode in Probe for EPMA:

http://probesoftware.com/smf/index.php?topic=837.msg5579#msg5579

This should work, even on your Mac! 

[Mike Matthews]

Thanks Annette and John, I wondered what the check box was for, now I know. Is there any reason, though, why the relative and three sets of absolute values couldn't all be displayed at the same time rather than having to switch between? There's plenty of room that side of the plot window. I'd particularly like to have the absolute energy so I can check my EMAS desk mat (every probe lab should have one😉) to see if it might be an unexpected element in the sample.

[John Donovan]

Thanks Annette and John, I wondered what the check box was for, now I know. Is there any reason, though, why the relative and three sets of absolute values couldn't all be displayed at the same time rather than having to switch between? There's plenty of room that side of the plot window. I'd particularly like to have the absolute energy so I can check my EMAS desk mat (every probe lab should have one😉) to see if it might be an unexpected element in the sample.

Hi Mike,
Just a quick note that (almost) every control in Probe for EPMA has a "tool tip help" feature which is visible if you hover the mouse over the button, checkbox, etc. GUI control in our software (Anette's screen shot above shows it nicely).  And of course there's actual documentation- not that any one would ever want to crack that open!         But if one were willing, one can simply hit the F1 key and (usually) the relevant page in the user manual (for the window/dialog box that has the current mouse focus), will open up in Windows, for your reading pleasure! 

Of course asking a question on the forum is really the best way to find out!       I've learned that when one person has a question, there's half a dozen others that have been wondering the same darn thing!

As for implementing the cursor position in other units, almost anything is possible in software- just a matter of doing it!        I'll add it to the list!
john

[glennpoirier]

Hi John,
I finally got around to writing a script to create a POS file that  I can use to import 6610LV  coordinates into PFE. It works fine, but I wonder if its possible to make a few modifications to the import dialogs in PFE?

1) When PFE wants you to locate the fiduciary points in the input file it drives the stage to the position of the point. Since the coordinates of these points are coming from the SEM, the stage is now nowhere near the current location of the point. It would be nice if we could turn off this behaviour somehow (perhaps an unlabeled checkbox?)
2) When the import dialog is displayed it holds on to mouse focus so I can't use picturesnap to navigate to  my  reference points. Could we change the focus behaviour of the import dialog so I can click on picturesnap?


Cheers

Glenn

[John Donovan]

Hi Glenn,
There's a couple of things you can do already.

Note the Stage button in the fiducial confirm dialog?  If you click this button you can use the StageMap to get you close to the fiducial position and when you close the StageMap window you can click the Update button to update the fiducial you are on.



Also, as an alternative, since the FEI and JEOL instruments use mm stage units, you can click "No" when it asks if you want to transform the fiducials and simply apply some mm offsets using the import increment dialog:



Edit by John: Ooops! just remembered JEOL is anti-cartesian and FEI is cartesian so the import increment feature won't work!  Better to use the fiducial transform or PictureSnapApp as described below...

Does that help at all? 

Oh, one more option: if you buy PictureSnapApp for your JEOL instrument you'd be able use PictureSnap as a separate application since it runs from it's own folder.   I installed PictureSnapApp on the Cameca PC, so I don't have to use any "real estate" on my PFE monitor. 

Finally if you got PictureSnapApp running on your SEM you'd also be able to transfer images with stage coordinates between the two instruments easily.  That's what it's designed for!

[glennpoirier]

Thanks John,
Both of these  things help. I hadn't calibrated the stage image yet; that helps.
The 6610LV is a JEOL SEM but it doesn't use the EIKS interface( I think only the 7xxx SEMs use it) so I can't run PictureSnapApp :-(
I'm going to buy a standalone copy of PictureSnapApp for the probe computer when I have the cash so that will help too.

Cheers

Glenn

[John Donovan]

Hi John,

In the Plot window it's really useful that you display relative offset of the cursor from the peak position, but would it be possible to also display the cursor's absolute position in spectrometer units, kV and nm?

Mike

Hi Mike,
I think we implemented what you want.  Here is the modified Plot! dialog in spectro unit mode showing the actual keV of the mouse position:



The keV cursor position is also displayed when the plot is in angstrom mode.  And here is the same plot, but in keV mode, in which case I decided to plot the additional mouse cursor position in angstroms (not nm, but hey, that's easy to convert in your head!):



Update from the Help menu and it should all work.  Remember to uncheck the little checkbox for absolute x-position display in whatever plot mode units you are already in.
john

[Mike Matthews]

Thanks John, that's awesome!

Wavelength is fine in Angstroms, as you say it's easy to convert, but one of these days you guys will figure out the metric system

[John Donovan]

Thanks John, that's awesome!

Wavelength is fine in Angstroms, as you say it's easy to convert, but one of these days you guys will figure out the metric system

Ha!  We 'mericans will never go metric!   And beer should not come in pints, right?   

Seriously, 10^-10 meters isn't metric?  OK, maybe angstroms are not SI, but they're metric I think...

They say that knowing more than one language may have some cognitive advantage- since most in the US are pretty disadvantaged in that sense, maybe having to deal with British and metric units has a similar cognitive value also?  But based on the current levels of cognitive dissonance in this country, I sort of doubt it.

[Changkun]

Digitize Image is very useful to set positions to be analyzed on the acquired image.

It would be better if the window is resizable or if the image is zoomable. That is, if the window size for 1024 x 1024 is ~4 times larger than that for 512 x 512, it would be much easier to find good points for measurements. (Same suggestion for displaying window.)

Using PictureSnap is another way to make positions on high-resolution image, but this way is more convenient and more accurate, I guess.

[John Donovan]

Digitize Image is very useful to set positions to be analyzed on the acquired image.

It would be better if the window is resizable or if the image is zoomable. That is, if the window size for 1024 x 1024 is ~4 times larger than that for 512 x 512, it would be much easier to find good points for measurements. (Same suggestion for displaying window.)

Using PictureSnap is another way to make positions on high-resolution image, but this way is more convenient and more accurate, I guess.

Hi Changkun,
This is an interesting idea.  Let me look into it and see how hard it is to do.
john

[John Donovan]

Digitize Image is very useful to set positions to be analyzed on the acquired image.

It would be better if the window is resizable or if the image is zoomable. That is, if the window size for 1024 x 1024 is ~4 times larger than that for 512 x 512, it would be much easier to find good points for measurements. (Same suggestion for displaying window.)

Hi Changkun,
I modified the code for the Imaging and Digitize Image windows. You can now make them as large as your monitor allows.



I tested the beam deflection and digitizing functions and they all seem to work with the resizable window. But please let me know if you find anything that doesn't seem right.  I haven't had a change to look at the Display Images dialog yet, but I will get to that.
john

[Changkun]

Hi John,

I tested both the Imaging at Acquire! and Digitize Image and both work nicely.
Thanks a lot.

Changkun