First tries using McStas

[Kristian Nielsen]

> I have a small suggestion for the next version of McStas: It would be
> nice to get a rough estimate on the total calculation time needed at
> the beginning of any job. It should be no problem estimating the time
> for the calculation of 1E+8 neutrons after having calculated the
> first 100 neutrons. A short note on the screen would be nice.

Sounds like a good idea, I will make a note of that.

> Did I tell you about the difference in the angular profiles between
> beamline and McStas at the end of the tapered guide? Beamline gives me 
> a rather regular profile, while McStas calculates some extra maxima at
> about 11 minutes of arc (looks like Batman). The difference is not
> extreme but large enough to again think about the guide. I should send
> you the files if you want to have a look at them.

Yes, send them and I will take a look. Do you think that the difference
is caused by a program bug (in McStas or Beamline), or in an error in
the setup of the instrument definition?

> I don't know what to do about the PGPLOT problem. May I refer to your
> offer of giving you an account here?

Yes indeed, it it is possible for you to provide me with an account,
that would be the easiest way to solve the problem. I would really like
to solve this problem, especially since future versions of McStas will
provide some useful simple visualization built-in that will depend
heavily on the Perl<->PGPLOT interface PgPerl that you experience
problem with.

 - Kristian.