Brief introduction to the graphical user interface

5.1 Brief introduction to the graphical user interface

This section gives an ultra-brief overview of how to use McXtrace once it has been properly installed. It is intended for those who do not read manuals if they can avoid it. For details on the diﬀerent steps, see the following sections. This section uses the Template_1Slit_Diff.instr ﬁle supplied in the examples/Templates directory of the McXtrace distribution.

To start the graphical user interface of McXtrace, run the mxgui command which will open a window with a number of menus, see ﬁgure 5.1.

Figure 5.1.:

The graphical user interface mxgui.

To load an instrument, select “New from Template” (formerly known as the “X-ray Site” menu) and open the template/example Template_1Slit_Diff. Next, check that the current plotting backend setting (“Preferences” in the File menu, or the --autoplotter option of mxrun) corresponds to your system setup:

by editing the user conﬁguration ﬁle, see mxrun --edit-user-config,
or by setting the MCXTRACE_FORMAT environment variable.

Next, select “Run simulation” from the “Simulation” menu. The McXtrace compiler mcxtrace will translate the deﬁnition into an executable program. Then mxgui will pop up a dialog window. Type a value for the “ROT” parameter (e.g. 90), check the “Plot results” option, and select “Start”. The simulation will run, and when it ﬁnishes after a while the results will be plotted in a window, using one of the Python plotting back-ends (matplotlib, pyqtgraph or an HTML/browser view), see section 5.4.5. For other options, execute mxplot --help to get help.

To visualize or debug the simulation graphically, repeat the steps but check the “Trace” option instead of the “Simulate” option. A window will pop up showing a sketch of the instrument, drawn by the mxdisplay front-end (section 5.4.4), again using one of the matplotlib, pyqtgraph or webGL back-ends.

For a slightly longer gentle introduction to McXtrace, see the McXtrace tutorial (available from [Mcx]), and as of version 3.8.6 built into the mxgui help menu. For more technical details, read on from section 5.2

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