Brief SM_GUI Overview

This section gives a very brief overview of the SM_GUI program. More instructions on basic jobs are given throughout this chapter. Chap. 5 explains all options in detail. You might want to skim over it once you have some experience - you'll probably find some goodies which are useful for you. Also remember that you can download a version of the program to run on your own computer (without the microscope control features), for later data review and analysis (for spectral analysis, you'll want to use stack_analyze and pca_gui though^2.1).

Figure 2.1: The SM_GUI main window with an image loaded.

Start SM_GUI by clicking the corresponding button on the client computer's desktop. You'll have to click away the IDL Virtual Machine splash screen. The main window, with an image loaded, is shown in Fig. 2.1. The features of main interest for the beginner are:

The main image window

which displays scan images or spectra (see Sec. 5.4).

The Display Information area

which gives you information about the image location you clicked at (see Sec. 5.8).

The Display Parameters area

lets you adjust contrast and zoom (see Sec. 5.5).

The Spectra Settings area

lets you control the display of point spectra (see Sec. 5.6).

The Beamline Control area

lets you change the x-ray energy (see Sec. 2.9 and 5.9.2).

The File menu

(see Sec. 5.10) lets you open, save and close files (note that when running the microscope, you'll want to open from and save on the server, not locally). Also, you can print a scan summary (e.g. as a logbook stamp) and export the data into various formats, like standard image files.

The Alignment menu

is described in this chapter whenever necessary (also see Sec. 5.11).

The Scan menu

lets you set up and start scans - that's what you're here for, after all (see Sec. 2.6, and in more detail Chap. 7).

The Move menu

lets you move the scan devices in the microscope, e.g., to move to a region of interest in the sample (see Sec. 2.7 and 5.13).

The Scan Parameters window

, opened from File $\rightarrow$ Display Scan Parameters, shows you some important parameters of the currently displayed scan (see Fig. 2.2).

Figure 2.2: The window to show the most important parameters of the currently displayed scan. It can be opened from File $\rightarrow$ Display Scan Parameters

.