[neutron-mc] Announcing McStas 1.9
Peter Willendrup
peter.willendrup at risoe.dk
Wed Nov 16 16:23:27 CET 2005
Hello everyone,
The McStas (http://www.mcstas.org) team is happy to announce that the
new relese of the general neutron ray-trace simulation package has been
released.
The new release can be downloaded from the project website at
http://www.mcstas.org/download
For a list of the most important new bugfixes, additions and features,
see the attached CHANGES.txt document.
Regards from the McStas team:
Peter Willendrup - peter.willendrup at risoe.dk
Kim Lefmann - kim.lefmann at risoe.dk
Emmanuel Farhi - farhi at ill.fr
Klaus Lieutenant - lieutena at ill.fr
--
Peter Willendrup <peter.willendrup at risoe.dk>
Risø National Laboratory
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/*******************************************************************************
*
* McStas, neutron ray-tracing package
* Copyright 1997-2004, All rights reserved
* Risoe National Laboratory, Roskilde, Denmark
* Institut Laue Langevin, Grenoble, France
*
* Documentation: CHANGES
*
* %Identification
* Written by: KN, KL, PEO, EF, PW
* Date: 1997
* Origin: Risoe, ILL, ANSTO
* Release: McStas 1.8
* Version: 1.8
* Modified by: KN, October 26, 1998 : initial release 1.0
* Modified by: KN, March 31, 1999 : release 1.1
* Modified by: KN, January 31, 2000 : release 1.2
* Modified by: KN, May 18, 2000 : release 1.3
* Modified by: KN, July 28, 2000 : release 1.4
* Modified by: KN, PEO, March 16, 2001: release 1.4.1
* Modified by: PEO, EF, October, 10th, 2001: release 1.5
* Modified by: PW, EF, May 19th 2003: version 1.7
* Modified by: PW, EF, March 4th 2004: version 1.8
* Modified by: PW, EF, November 16th 2005: version 1.9
*
* This file is part of McStas version 1.9, released November, 16th, 2005.
* It gives a 'changes' list from the beginning of the project
*
*******************************************************************************/
Changes in McStas v1.9, Nov 16, 2005
General
- To indicate the collaborative nature of the McStas package, the main website
URL does no longer belong to Risoe or ILL but is http://www.mcstas.org.
- The package has been strengthened by the presence of Klaus Lieutenant (former
captain of Vitess, HMI) at ILL. He has focused a lot on validation and testing
of the package, giving very important input and done very valuable work.
- To help us in the fight against bugs, a BUGZILLA system has been set up for users
to report their suggestions and problems. The system is available at the URL
http://www.mcstas.org/McZilla .
- The VnCS (Virtual neutron Code Sharing) agreement has been signed by the leaders
of the Vitess and McStas software packages to formally support closer collaboration
and sharing of code between the packages. At least one component (Vitess_ChopperFermi)
now works with both packages, work done by Klaus Lieutenant and Geza Zsigmond.
- Many big and small BUGS ellimnated!
- First attempt at "concentric components" (sample environment). See Isotropic_Sqw in
the 'Components' section below.
Documentation
- With this release, the component manual has finally been updated! Major work has
been put into this by especially Kim Lefmann and Emmanuel Farhi. The user manual
has also been revised, but not as intensively.
- Improvements to tutorial/teaching material as result of Copenhagen University course on
neutron scattering, given by Kim Lefmann and Peter Willendrup. The idea is that when
improved further, the full simulation part of the course can serve as an extended
tutorial for McStas. In the package, projects on virtual experiments at DMC, RITA-2 and
SANS-2 at PSI is included.
Tools
- A web frontend is now available for McStas, check it out at http://www.mcstas.org/webfront .
Currently it is not actually part of the package, may become so in a near future release.
- On Unix systems, mcdaemon is a tool to periodically send -USR2 signals (save) to running
simulation processes. Is in an early state but should work okay, but not documented in the
user manual. Replots intermediate data.
- mcgui has been intensively revised, many annoyances have been removed and features adjusted
for easier use.
Components
- For simplicity, a number of components (especially monitors and sources) have been merged.
This for example means that the Source_simple replaces the former Source_flat* components.
Fewer duplications of code => smaller risk of old bugs surviving in the code.
- PowderN: General powder sample component, replaces the simpler Powder1 and Powder2 components,
has a very flexible system to read crystallographic data for powder line description. Is
in the process of beeing validated against data from DMC at PSI. The code itself and the
validation of it is the result of collaboration between mainly Peter Willendrup from the
McStas team and Laurent Chapon (ISIS), Uwe Filges (PSI) and Lukas Keller (PSI). A validation
paper will be presented at ICNS, Sydney.
- Isotropic_Sqw: Originally work for the Ph.D. thesis of V. Hugouvieux, ILL. Extended and
validated intensively by Emmanuel Farhi, ILL. It handles elastic and inelastic scattering
for both coherent and incoherent processes, with secondary absorption and multiple scattering.
The code has been validated against PowderN and V_sample. It comes with the same flexible
system as PowderN to read data files, including crystallographic data for powder line
description. Moreover, it may be used to describe concentric geometries in order to model
sample environments.
- Vitess_ChopperFermi: Originally work for Vitess by Geza Zsigmond, now PSI. Validated and
adapted for use with McStas by Klaus Lieutentant, ILL in the frame of the VnCS agreement.
- TOFRes_sample: time-of-flight version of the Res_sample component. Written by Kim Lefmann,
Risoe. Will be merged with the res_sample component in next release.
- The full suite of Fermi Choppers have been tested intensively by Klaus Lieutentant, partly
inspired by the work of ILL stagiere Rebecca Peacock.
WARNINGS
- Because of rapid changes in the support software for McStas, the current release has support
for only some releases of:
* Scilab (Win32 and Unix) - pick release 3.0 from , e.g. from
http://www.scilab.org/download/index_download.php?page=oldReleases.html
* Perl (Win32) - on Windows we only support Perl 5.6 - pick
http://downloads.activestate.com/ActivePerl/Windows/5.6/ActivePerl-5.6.1.638-MSWin32-x86.msi
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