This tutorial was tested on
MatCalc version 6.04 rel 1.001
license: free
database: none

This first tutorial provides a brief tour of MatCalc's graphical user interface. The interface elements that will be referred to in the subsequent tutorials, are introduced here. At the end, the very basic operations with a workspace and a working directory are demonstrated.

• Appearance of the graphical user interface
• Menus and toolbar
• Console window
• Configuring the layout of the GUI
• The 'File' menu
• Creating a new workspace file
• Modifying the working directory
• Adding workspace information
• Saving and closing files
• Getting help

When MatCalc is first opened, the screen appears as shown below (Windows version).

The table below gives brief descriptions of the different areas of the screen.

As with any typical GUI application, this gives access to a number of sub-menus. The File and Help menus are documented in this tutorial, and the contents of the other menus will be described in more detail in subsequent tutorials.

On platforms running under MacOS an additional menu mcg is also present. Comprehensive information about the menu items can be found in the reference book.

The toolbar area contains a number of icon groups:

L-R : New, open, save, close workspace, print, documentation

L-R: select working directory, browse working directory, run script

L-R: Undo, redo, cut, copy, paste, find

L-R: Stop current action, single equilibrium, stepped equilibrium, search phase boundary, precipitate kinetics calculation, select calculation state, save into current calculation state, load from current calculation state, select calculation buffer.

L-R: Show/hide console, create new output window, create new plot window (p1-type)

Right-clicking on the toolbar area gives a menu allowing the user to control which windows and which icon groups are to be displayed on the screen:

The quick access bar enables you to customise the appearance of your MatCalc session by displaying, hiding and rearranging the windows.

The table below gives brief descriptions of the different areas of the screen.

	Wizard
	Hide options, variables, consoles and nodes. Workspace output windows remain visible.
	Show/maximise/hide the console window (three-way toggle).
	Show/hide the options window.
	Show/hide the variables window.
	Show/hide the nodes window.
	Start calculation (green arrow), stop calculation (red 'x' shown while calculation is running). Green tick-mark indicates successfully executed calculation.
	Freeze window updates during calculation.
	Job manager
	Fit windows into viewport (visible area on screen).
	Zoom in.
	Zoom out.
	Display an overview all open windows, enabling you to find the windows and regions of interest.
	Management of output windows configuration. Clicking the down-arrow to the right of this icon reveals three options: windowed - output is in moveable windows on the screen tabbed - output is accessible via browser-style tabs at the top of the viewport expose - automatic organisation of output, with minimisation of system windows such as options, console, etc. Clicking on the background of the viewport area brings back the previous display mode (windowed/tabbed).

In addition to the display options described above, icon groups and the 'Options', 'Variables', 'Nodes' and 'Console' windows can be detached from their locations and rearranged as desired by dragging and dropping. In this case, they are given title bars similar to that of the 'MatCalc console'. The 'Console', 'Options', 'Variables' and 'Command History' windows can also be attached to or detached from the left-hand column area as required.

Right-clicking on the menu bar brings up a menu allowing the user to show or hide menu icon groups and windows as described above ('Managing toolbar elements').

Enables the following windows to be displayed or hidden: 'console' (F4), 'options' (F3), 'variables' (F2), 'node manager' (Shift + F5)

Here the user can select an alternative font/font size for the display of numerical output. This does not affect the appearance of the 'console', 'nodes', 'options' and 'variables' windows.

The overall appearance of MatCalc can be modified here. The different options offer a greater or lesser degree of free space around text items, stronger or more subtle contrast etc. - experiment until you find an option that suits you.

This switches the numbers /0/, /1/, /2/, etc. in the top left-hand corner of the output windows.

Restores all windows to their default positions.

Using this menu, the output windows can be brought to the front (if hidden behind others) or restored to their original size (if minimised).

Having inspected most GUI elements, let’s have some interaction with MatCalc. In this section, a MatCalc workspace will be handled. A working directory will be specified also.

Clicking on File in the menu bar opens the following menu:

The workspace is the basic element for any activity in MatCalc GUI. It contains all the necessary information on the user calculations, comprising inputs (elements, phases, compositions, thermodynamic and mobility data) and outputs (results of calculations, graphs, etc.). Saving the workspace preserves all this information for future use.

To create a new workspace, do one of the following:

• Click on the icon on the toolbar
• Click on 'New' from the 'File' menu

• Press Ctrl + N on the keyboard
• Click on the button

The following dialogue box will appear (except when clicked on 'New Workspace' button):

Select 'MatCalc workspace' from the drop-down list. This runs a script file called autonew.mcs, which makes two additional windows appear: Phase details and Phase summary. When the new workspace is first created, the Phase summary and Phase details windows show messages indicating that no phases have yet been selected. The workspace is now ready for thermodynamic or precipitation calculations to be set up and performed.

The working directory is the directory opened by default when MatCalc is saving any output files or looking for any input files. Clicking on 'Working directory…' in the 'File' menu allows the user to designate an existing directory as the working directory or to create a new directory for this purpose. MatCalc remembers your chosen working directory for next time.

The paths of the current working directory and of recently used working directories are listed to the right of Recent working dirs…, allowing any of these directories to be selected easily.

The same information is also available in a drop-box in the toolbar area:

Clicking on Workspace info… in menu File opens a box in which information about the current workspace can be entered. This is useful for details of the assumptions used in the calculation, the sources of experimental data, etc.

Workspaces can be saved using alternatively:

• Save… in the menu File

• the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + S
• the icon on the toolbar.

To save an existing workspace under a different name, select Save As… from the file menu.

To close a workspace, do one of the following:

• choose Close Workspace from the file menu

• press Ctrl + Shift + W
• click on icon on the toolbar.

The MatCalc help files are accessible on this website. At present, no local installation is provided.

In the Console, typing a question-mark will display a list of available commands. These will be discussed in more detail in Tutorial 12.

The tutorial is continued in Tutorial 2 - Calculating a single equilibrium

Go to the MatCalc tutorial index.