Instruction Manual

NIRCal 5.5 Software Manual
28 NIRCal 5.5 Manual, Version A
The plots can show different selections, while the selection plotted is always visible on the subtitle.
The use of modern rendering techniques, such as Anti-Aliasing and Alpha-Blending (new hardware
accelerated features of newer graphic cards), allows to eliminate jagged edges and stair-stepped
lines. NIRCal applies these features to improve the graphical performance.
Anti-Aliasing (hotkey: a) eliminates jagged edges and stair-stepped lines. This can be switched on
permanently under: Edit / Options / 2 D Plot. Opening the 2 D plots is quicker with Anti-Aliasing using
new graphic cards, but can be slower with an older driver.
Alpha-Blending (hotkey: b) allows a partial transparency with steps of 1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8. 1/32, 1/64 (by
pressing b several times) and helps to look through huge amount of data. The Alpha-Blending level
can only be seen from the data color intensity: the more often the point is drawn, the brighter the color.
Each NIRCal rendering can be stopped immediately by pressing the ESC key.
Anti-Aliasing and Alpha-Blending are very useful for huge amount of spectra especially for 2-D spectra
plots (original, pretreated and residuum); Score plots (vs. PC or vs. Scores) and calibration curve
(original vs. Predicted).
On the left side the common drawing style is used, where no details can be seen. Anti-aliasing and
alpha-blending (right side) allow to look through a huge amount of data and to detect hidden
structures.
Note: In case a one dimensional matrix - which is a vector- is plotted, the subtitel is "All One".
"One" indicates the first selected "dimension" and not the value of the vector!
The colors are also selection dependent.
The plots can be opened as Table with the keyboard shortcut "G".
On each plot the X- and Y-axis can be flipped using the pop-up menu: Option/ Flip X-Axis (x) and
Option/ Flip Y-Axis (y).
2D combined scatter plots: beside the standard 2D plots it is possible to combine matrices, even if
they have only with one dimension matching. This can be created manually in the NIR-Explorer
selecting the two matrices and opening in pop-up menu the "2D-Combined Scatter".
There are several plot combinations available in NIRCal 5: under: View.
These plot combinations, which are fixed, can help to make the data selections easier (spectra,
wavelengths, properties, PCs) with useful graphics.
The dependency plots can help to find hidden correlation between spectra and different users, or
time, or instruments.
The users can create own plot combinations and can save them under: Workspace.