26 August 2009

Vision 4.2.6, available for download or update as of 3 August 2009, offers two new significant features. The most important of these is the ability of Measurement Tasks that present their data in a plot dialog to switch views to a tabbed dialog. The tabbed dialog presents the displayed data plot and error reports (if any) on the main dialog. All other configuration, measured and derived parameters are displayed on a second tab. The primary purpose is to reduce the size of the dialog for display on laptops and smaller or lower-resolution monitors.

The tabbed display option is enabled or disabled in the plot configuration dialog using a Display Tabbed checkbox control. If the data is presented in a standard full-view dialog, the dialog may be toggled on-the-fly to a tabbed view by clicking the Tabbed View button. Once a tabbed or standard full-view option is selected, that option remains persistent in subsequent measurements or DataSet Archive Regraph data display. The selection is recorded in the registry so that it remains persistent, even between instances of the Vision program. If the current selection is full view, it may be changed to tabbed view either in the plot configuration dialog or using the Tabbed View toggle button. Once tabbed view is selected, it can only be changed back to full view in a plot configuration dialog.

The figure below shows the full- and tabbed-view data displays for a Hysteresis Task. The data shown are a 9.0-Volt, 10.0 ms measurement on a 4/20/80 PNZT sample made by Radiant Technologies, Inc. These samples are introduced on the Components page of this website and detailed in the data sheet at ferrodevices.com/Assets/parts/capacitoretbdsquote.pdf.

The second feature added to Version 4.2.6 is also demonstrated in the figure above. All Tasks have had an Admin Info button added to either their configuration dialog or their data display dialog. The button opens a subdialog that displays Task information. Program Control and Filter Tasks display the configuration and execution dates and times along with Vision Version and Vision compilation date. Hardware Tasks add information about the tester name and serial number and the driver Version. Tasks that were executed under Vision 4.2.5 or older, that are recalled under 4.2.6 or later, will provide default "dummy" information for Vision Version, Vision Compilation Date, Tester Name, Tester Serial Number and Driver Version. Hardware Tasks that are executed with no tester connected to the host will indicate "No Tester Present" in the hardware information portion of the Admin Info dialog.

The Admin Info button is provided primarily as a troubleshooting tool that will give the engineers at RTI a more complete picture of the conditions under which problem measurements were made. Remember that, when requesting assistance from Radiant Technologies in understanding data and/or troubleshooting apparent measurement problems, it is best to attach a DataSet file to the email that requests assistance. The DataSet should be kept small, but should contain enough instances of the various Tasks involved to fully characterize the data/problems that are to be examined. With a DataSet and the Admin Info tool, we here at Radiant can develop a complete picture of the conditions unders which the data were collected.

Please contact Radiant with any questions.

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