This tutorial was tested on
MatCalc version 6.00 rel 0.100
license: free
database: none

This first tutorial provides a brief tour of MatCalc's user interface and explains how to perform basic file operations.

• Appearance of the graphical user interface
• Menus and toolbar
• Console window
• Command history
• 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.

Comprehensive information about the menu items can be found in the reference book.

The toolbar area contains a number of icon groups:

File etc

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

Working directory and script

L-R: browse working directory, run script

Edit

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

Calculation

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.

Manage windows

L-R: Show/hide console, create new output window

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.
	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.
	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).

This window allows command-line input, as an alternative to using the graphical controls. Commands can also be grouped into script files, for easier and more rapid execution of repetitive or complex tasks. More on the console, command-line syntax and scripts will be found in Tutorial 12: Using the MatCalc console and Tutorial 13: Introduction to scripting. The console can be shown or hidden using View > Show > Show console, pressing the F4 key or clicking on the icon.

MatCalc 6 uses a new formalism for the command-line input. While the scripts and commands used in the older versions are recognized by the current version, the old command formalism is to be typed in 'MatCalc 5 console' window.

The command history window can be made to appear by selecting the console window and either clicking on the up-arrow icon or pressing Ctrl + up-arrow. This window gives a chronological list of all the commands entered in the Console.

A command can be selected using the mouse pointer or arrow keys. Right-clicking on the command displays the following menu. On the right-hand side of the menus in MatCalc are keyboard shortcuts for the more commonly used commands. It can be seen from the image below that it is sufficient to press the Enter key to execute the selected command.

Previously used commands can also be accessed in the Console window itself; pressing the up-arrow key displays the most recently entered command, and pressing it repeatedly scrolls through recent commands in reverse chronological order. The command displayed can be edited then executed by pressing the Enter key.

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.

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).

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

The workspace is the basic file type in MatCalc. It contains all the necessary information on the calculation or series of calculations under consideration, 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.

Click on the icon, open New from the File menu or click Ctrl + N. The following dialogue box will appear:

Select MatCalc workspace from the drop-box. 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 saving new files or opening existing ones. 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… 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 Save… from the file menu, the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + S or the icon on the toolbar. To save an existing workspace under a different name, select Save As… from the file menu.

To close a file, choose Close Workspace from the file menu, press Ctrl + Shift + W or click on .

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.