This is the demonstration version of DiScO, v. 1.1, made such that you can experience and try out all the features of the full program without having any particular hardware attached to your computer (and, of course, without paying any registration fee). The program contains an extensive simulation set of dielectric data &endash; obtained during an actual experiment on an antiferroelectric liquid crystal sample &endash; and three different sample texture images (the number of images was kept so low in order to minimize the size of the program file). This data set will be used to simulate an experiment, following the way you program it. You can enter temperatures between 30°C and 170°C, measuring fields between 5mV and 1.1V (but note that the data will look very bad at low measuring fields, in particular at low frequencies &endash; this is not an error in the demo version but reflects the actual scattered results that the HP 4192A impedance analyzer produces on the type of liquid crystal sample used) and DC-biases between -35V and +35V.
If you do not have LabVIEW or LabVIEW Runtime Engine of version 6 or higher installed on your computer (which must be running Windows, version 95 or newer) you should download the DiScO-demo Installer package. When you have unzipped the archive, you will have a folder containing all DiScO files as well as a folder labeled Installer, inside which you will find a file called INSTALL.EXE. Double-click this file and follow the instructions. After installing the DiScO program, the installer will install LabVIEW Runtime Engine as well (do not interrupt the installation after the DiScO installation, but let both processes finish).
If you do have LabVIEW or LabVIEW Runtime Engine of sufficiently recent version installed, no particular installation procedure is required for running the DiScO demo. You can then download the smaller DiScO-demo Application package.
Regardless of how you install DiScO, it is important that the DiScODemo.exe and DiScODemo.ini files reside in the same folder. In case you downloaded the Application package, these files are already kept together. If you used the installer, however, you have to manually move the DiScODemo.ini file to the folder in which you installed DiScO. If the two files are not in the same folder, the fonts will be incorrect when running DiScO, and it may be difficult to use the program due to text being unreadable. The Example Scripts folder and the ReadMe file can of course be kept wherever you want.
To get started, just double-click the DiScODemo.exe file. You will get to the Session Programming window (Figure 1) in which you can enter parameters regarding your sample (these have no effect in the demo but the controls are nevertheless there since they are very important in the real version), turn on or off temperature control and set the post-measurement temperature (the latter control disappears if you turn temperature control off), edit the preferences (see below) and decide how many Runs you want to program and carry out within this session (click on the Explain! button for an explanation of what Sessions and Runs are).
After clicking Continue, you will be guided through a Run programming wizard for defining all parameters of your Run. In the first step you can choose between programming a new Run from scratch or loading a previously saved Script, for instance one of the example scripts which reside in the Example Scripts folder (see below). When you are done with the wizard, you will be asked to define a place where your files will be saved and a generic file name for the Run. It is a good idea to create an empty folder for each Run &endash; depending on how you program it there can be quite a few files produced during the experiment. Note that the demo version of DiScO saves all files in exactly the same way as the real version does. This is in order for you to see how the results from a measurement are saved and how you can continue to work with them in your analysis programs.
Two files are saved directly after finishing programming the Run, before the first actual measurement is performed. These are the nn_script.txt and the nn_General.txt files, where "nn" is the generic file name you entered. The first one of these contains the script for the Run, which means that you can use it to repeat the experiment later on or as a starting point in creating a slightly modified Run (after you load a script you will be given a graphical overview of the Run and you can edit each aspect of it). The second contains sample parameters as well as any explanatory text that you may wish to enter.
In case you chose to program several Runs, the wizard will be repeated once for each Run.
In the Session programming window you can press a button to enter the preference editing mode. This is not necessary but you may want to try it out, just to see the flexibility of DiScO. Furthermore, some settings may not be to your liking as they tend to prolong the measurement &endash; for instance the DC-bias compensation being activated &endash; or be more or less annoying (this might apply to the reminders that show up just before the first measurement starts &endash; all of them can be turned on or off to your liking).
While the bridge is measuring, the Bridge_Measurement window will be open. In this you can follow the measurement point by point. You can choose between different ways of presenting the data by clicking in the menu above each diagram window, see Figure 2.
While DiScO is running, the Single_run_3D window (Figure 3) keeps you updated with the progress. In the upper part of the window you can choose between seeing which steps of the Run that have been carried out (click the Run program overview tab) or all data that have been gathered so far, displayed using 3D plots (click the Measurement Results tab). In case more than two parameters are swept in your Run, e.g.if you carry out temperature, frequency and bias sweeps, the 3D-plots are distributed over another set of tabs, one for each value of the variable that you have chosen for grouping the data files produced.
You can rotate a 3D plot by clicking on it with the left mouse button. If you want to zoom in or out, drag up or down with the left mouse button while you keep the Alt key pressed. If you want to translate the spectra, keep the Shift key pressed while dragging, still with the left mouse button.
Included with the demo is also a set of example scripts. You don't need to use these and may, of course, program your simulated experiment any way you like, but they can serve as a starting point to get an overview of the possibilities of DiScO. Four of the example scripts are for rather short measurements (about 10 minutes for the whole run) and one is for a considerably longer experiment (several hours), giving a more realistic view of how a typical DiScO experiment might look. The reason for its length is, first of all, that it includes a considerable amount of temperatures and dc-bias values, but also that it has been designed to illustrate also the functions in DiScO which one might not use everyday, such as inverse repetition of sweeps (e.g. cooling after heating), sample texture photography at important points of the experiment (at new temperature, at new bias, after the measurement and with a dc-bias field of the measuring field strength applied), repetition of certain measurements, etc.
Of course, you do not need to run an example Run as it is programmed by us, but you can edit it exactly to your liking.
We have deliberately made this introduction short. We believe that most aspects of DiScO are quite self-explanatory (where non-obvious parameters show up there is usually an Explain! button next to them) so we want you to get started right away and experiment with the demo, rather than starting by reading a lengthy instruction manual (of course, if you get the full version of the program, it will be delivered with a detailed manual, both in digital and in paper format). However, if you do run into problems, or have any type of general questions related to the program, do not hesitate to contact us at:
We would be delighted to hear what you think of DiScO. What did you like, what didn't you like, and what would you like to see that isn't there yet. Furthermore, to create the demo version we actually had to do quite a lot of reprogramming as compared to the full version of DiScO, which has no need for the rather sophisticated data simulation that the demo uses. Hence, there may be small bugs that we have not discovered &endash; the demo is not nearly as well tested as the real version. Of course we would be very grateful if you inform us of any such problems as well.
We do hope that you will enjoy the demo version and that it will make you want to have the full version as well! We hope to hear from you again soon.
page revised October 31, 2003