How to add notes/images and display messages

As the Texture Expert in the lab you may have designed a few projects for your product texture analysis. However, it is likely that your projects will need to be rolled out and used by others in the laboratory. You will want to make sure that every step of the testing is carried out as you intended and to help with this you might want to provide reminder messages and instructive illustrations within your projects that guides the operators through the correct process.

So, let’s look at a few ways to make texture analysis easier.

Add notes to the instructions for the user before they start testing

Display messages during testing

You can build messages into your macros that will appear at the relevant stage of sample testing to instruct the operator what to do next. From the macro command list, select ‘Display Message’. The following window will be displayed for you to type in the message that you would like to pop up:

Do not give the user of this project the choice of a yes or no answer. The operator should, in this case, need to click on OK when the message has been read.

Add images to the instructions for the user

An image can be added to support a pop-up instruction (such as ‘Place sample centrally under probe’). To do this, use the macro command ‘Set Notes for Display, Graph or Project’ and select to apply the notes to the ‘Display’ as shown below:

Insert your image by right clicking in the empty Notes box and then Insert Picture. Text can also be added to this Notes box. The picture (and text) will pop up during that step of the macro.

Here are a couple of additional tips you might not know.

How to create a group file for graphs

What if you wanted to create a group of files pulled from various different folders into one location?

Bring the selected files you want to store together into your graph window.

Right click to open the graph management menu.

Create a single .ARCGRP file from your selected graphs. When you open this .ARCGRP file later, it will automatically reopen all the included .arc files, regardless of their original locations on different paths or drives. This method conveniently links various test datasets without the need to duplicate arc files.

Graph Group Statistics

Did you know that you can look at your graph group statistics within your graph view by right clicking in the graph window and clicking on Group Statistics – you then have a choice of whether you want to show the statistics for your maximum values or your minimum values.

Have you got the latest version of Exponent/Exponent Connect software to take advantage of all of these features? Update your Software now.