Wish List for PFE Features

[John Donovan]

Hi John
My wish would be to have the list of standards in the MAN fit window sorted by standard number. I am not too sure what is governing the order they appear at the moment, it doesnt appear to be mean Z.

Cheers

Hi Ben,
If you update PFE now you should see the standards in the MAN dialog sorted by number.

Good idea!
john

[BenjaminWade]

Awesome, thanks John

[John Donovan]

Hi John and Philipp,
I especially agree with Philipp's request for some shortcut keys! One I'd really appreciate would be the Single Points menu on the Digitize positions window.
I'd then be able to assign that key combination to a USB foot pedal and store points without taking my eyes off the JEOL SEM screens. It's all about productivity!

Cheers

Glenn

Hi Glenn, Philipp, and Karsten,
The latest Probe for EPMA v. 12.7.5 now has improved tab order for the standard assignments and Elements/Cations dialogs. It also has shortcut keys for the Single Points and Shotgun buttons in the Digitize dialog. 

The Single Points hot key seems to work just fine, but in testing we noticed that on some computers, the shortcut key for the Shotgun button does not work as expected. For some reason on these computers the pressing of the <alt> and s keys changes the s key code to the "application menu" key code. This is apparently due to some other application or the operating system function taking control over this key combination. We are investigating.

Please let us know if there's other places that need improvement in tab order or shortcut keys.

[Philipp Poeml]

Hi John,

great, thanks a lot. In calczaf I would like to open the edit mac table dialogue using alt-x and then something. And the tab order in that dialogue would be nice to be fixed.

Cheers
Philipp

[John Donovan]

Hi John,

great, thanks a lot. In calczaf I would like to open the edit mac table dialogue using alt-x and then something. And the tab order in that dialogue would be nice to be fixed.

Cheers
Philipp

Hi Philipp,
We did fix the tab order in the Edit MAC Value dialog, but we didn't bump the version number only the revision number, so if you want to have CalcZAF.exe updated you'll have to run the CalcZAF.msi installer file. Or you can run the ProbeforEPMA.msi installer *again* and the 2nd time when it gives you the "Repair" option, choose that.

We'll add the menu shortcuts next.
john

[John Donovan]

Hi John,

great, thanks a lot. In calczaf I would like to open the edit mac table dialogue using alt-x and then something. And the tab order in that dialogue would be nice to be fixed.

Cheers
Philipp

Hi Philipp,
We've had a bit of a "hodge-podge" of keyboard shortcuts in PFE and CalcZAF and decided to make them more consistent and uniform for all the apps. First of all we removed all the <ctrl> shortcut keys and replaced most of them with <alt> key shortcut combinations. We also added some new <alt> key shortcuts for some menus, such as the Edit MAC Table as you requested.

As an example, here is what the main main log window in the CalcZAF app looks like when started up:



Now when one holds down the <alt> key things change. Can you see that?  Yes, each main menu item now has the first letter of each menu *underlined* as seen here:



This underlining will now be the new "hint" for the <alt> shortcut keys.  Now if the user say, hits the "x" key for the X-Ray menu, the X-Ray menu will be displayed as seen here:



Then the user simply hits the "e" key and the Edit MAC Table dialog will appear for custom editing of the current (default) MAC  table.  So <alt> "x" and then "e" now opens the Edit MAC Table dialog. The tab order should be OK now too.

We've done something similar to most of the Probe software apps, though there is one caveat. Although in principle we could make any character in each menu the "underline" shortcut key, right now we are limiting the <alt> shortcut keys to the first letter of each menu.  This means that if more than one menu (within a single menu level) utilizes the same letter, we can only make one of them be the <alt> shortcut key.

But with that caveat in mind, if you or anyone else, sees additional opportunities for further <alt> shortcut keys, please let us know. Thanks!

[Anette von der Handt]

I am not sure if this was already discussed but would it be possible to have an "assign to unknown" option in the "Display...TDI dialog? Similar to the background models dialog where I can directly assign the chosen model parameters to the individual unknown.

Thanks!

[John Donovan]

I am not sure if this was already discussed but would it be possible to have an "assign to unknown" option in the "Display...TDI dialog? Similar to the background models dialog where I can directly assign the chosen model parameters to the individual unknown.

Thanks!

Anette,
This is a really good idea. Thanks!

So what we did was add a button to assign the currently selected and displayed TDI fit method (linear, quadratic, and logarithmic) to the selected element in them selected sample. 

Note that unlike the TDI fit display in the Standard Assignments dialog in the Analyze! window, this TDI dialog only displays one data point (line) at a time, but the TDI fit assignment is applied to all data points (lines) in the sample. So one should be sure that the selected fit is appropriate for all lines in the sample, not just the one displayed.

That said, once we added an assign TDI fit button we then saw a problem, and that was that there is no display for what the current TDI fit assignment actually is!  So we added a label that displays the current TDI fit for the selected element and selected sample as seen here:



Then when the user selects a different TDI fit, that is displayed in the TDI graph and so if one then clicks the Assign TDI Fit To Sample button the TDI fit is assigned to the selected element and sample as seen here:



And the label is updated to reflect the change in the TDI fit type.

Thanks for the cool idea.   

[Anette von der Handt]

Woohoo!!!!! Instant wish fulfillment. Thank you!

[Karsten Goemann]

My wish is to have an "Acquire Images" tick box in Automate | Automation Actions, which would then acquire an image for every sample in the Automate position list (e.g. using the "last unknown" beam settings and Acquire | Imaging image settings) without running an actual x-ray acquisition.
Or is this already possible somehow?

We often acquire automated BSE images during Automate! runs using the functions in the Acquisition Options dialog, as they are very useful for providing textural context to the analysis data, but sometimes something goes wrong - e.g. we've picked the wrong beam current, magnification, brightness/contrast, detector signal for the image acquisition without noticing... and all images (sometimes hundreds...) are useless. So it'd be great if I could just fix the settings and quickly acquire all images again without repeating the actual analyses.

There may be other situations where we may just want to acquire a series of images where this could be useful.

[John Donovan]

Hi Karsten,
You can do this already from the Stage application.

Just be sure to use the Imaging button in the Mosaic dialog to adjust the proper imaging parameters first. You don't need to actually digitize mosaic positions, the automation will use whatever position samples you select for the image acquisitions.

https://probesoftware.com/smf/index.php?topic=324.0

[Karsten Goemann]

Thanks John, I've just tried that and it works great.

Is there a way how I can set where/how they are saved, e.g. so I don't have to dig them individually out of those sub folders, or for example include a scale bar? I assume there is no way of re-integrating them in the .MDB/.BIM for the run so it can display the analysis location?

[John Donovan]

Hi Karsten,
The acquisition also saves the images as GRD files, so they are calibrated, e.g, load them into CalcImage or PictureSnapApp to see the scale bar. The ACQ file also contains the imaging and column conditions.

There is a load PrbImg option in the PFE Imaging window that might work for importing them, but we would need to add support for importing GRD files.

Let me think about it a bit and see what we can come up with.

[Karsten Goemann]

Great, many thanks John.

What we love about this automated imaging feature in PFE (and why we basically have it always on by default) is that it is so easy and quick to use - just tick a box and it automatically acquires an image for every dataset, and then we can just export all of them with a single click after the run and have all the image files (with and without scale bar, point location...) in a single folder ready to use.

[John Donovan]

Thanks John, I've just tried that and it works great.

Is there a way how I can set where/how they are saved, e.g. so I don't have to dig them individually out of those sub folders, or for example include a scale bar? I assume there is no way of re-integrating them in the .MDB/.BIM for the run so it can display the analysis location?

Hi Karsten,
Your wish is granted!     

It took a bit of thinking and some code re-arrangement, but we found a way to allow automated acquisition of calibrated images in PFE from the Automate! window when simply confirming stage positions.  These images will be automatically saved to your currently open probe database.



Download v. 12.8.5 from the PFE Help menu when you are ready to try it out.