Matter Lab

Ten materials-science object types for teaching and presenting, with parameter-driven views and dataset playback. Availability can vary during the beta.

Matter Lab is Quodra's materials-science family: ten object types, each a real object on the canvas rather than a picture of one, wired into the same parameter system as the rest of the product. A temperature slider can move a state point on a phase diagram, slide the common tangent along a pair of Gibbs curves, and scrub a simulation, all in the same drag.

Two rules run through everything here, and they are worth knowing before the feature list.

• Rendering and export have different limits. Matter objects use SVG and DOM for the editor, previews and presenter view. PDF and images capture their appearance. The current PowerPoint export uses labelled placeholders for Matter objects; a shared viewer does not provide the editor's interactive controls or reactive computation. See Import & export.
• It refuses rather than invents. Derived numbers arrive with the method that produced them. Approximations name themselves on the slide. Where the code cannot answer honestly — a diffraction pattern for an element it has no scattering factors for, a micron reading on an uncalibrated image — it says so and stops.

The ten objects#

Every one of them is described field by field in The object types.

Adding one to a slide#

They share one button on the insert toolbar, labelled Matter Lab, with the crystal on the button itself — press Y — and the rest of the family in its caret: Crystal structure, Phase diagram, Diffraction (XRD), Spectrum, Stress–strain, Gibbs energy, Trajectory (MD), Field playback, Ashby chart, Micrograph.

A new object arrives empty and says what it wants. A crystal reads No structure yet · Import a CIF, POSCAR or XYZ file in the inspector; a plot reads No data yet · Import a CSV or link a source in the inspector. Nothing is invented to fill the space.

Interaction, and when it is live#

On the editing canvas, double-click into an object to use its controls. Presenter mode supports live interaction where the object's controls and parameter policies allow it. Shared links and embeds use a read-only slide viewer and do not provide the same controls or reactive computation.

The transport bars, plot cursors and drag handles all commit through the deck's own history, and long gestures collapse: a wheel zoom on a crystal is one undo step, a minute of playback is one undo step, and applying a saved state is one undo step rather than the journey to it.

The Lab workspace#

Every Matter inspector has a Workspace row with an Open Matter Lab button. It opens a full-screen surface over the deck's own objects — the header says edits land on the deck — ⌘Z is the deck's undo, and it means it: there is no second buffer, nothing is copied in or out, and closing with Done discards nothing.

Down the left is the mode rail, one mode per type, each listing the deck's objects of that type with a + button that adds one to the current slide:

• Crystal & lattice
• Phase & thermo
• Free energy
• Mechanical
• Diffraction
• Spectroscopy
• Microscopy
• Selection
• Simulation
• Field

The middle holds the object at full size; the right holds the same inspector the slide shows. With nothing added yet the middle reads Nothing here yet · Add an object from a mode on the left.

Connections — what drives what#

The workspace header carries a Connections view: every parameter on the deck, listed with its kind, its current value and the panel it belongs to, then the wires.

• A → line names what the parameter drives, as object · slot, with the slot's unit in brackets.
• A ⇢ line names what reads it by name — a code cell that mentions it, or prose and notation that interpolate {{name}}.
• Warnings sit on the wire that earned them: unit mismatch, units differ … — check the scale, a number wired into a choice, a choice wired into a number, a slot this object no longer offers, the object this drives was deleted.
• A parameter that drives nothing and that nothing reads is dimmed and marked drives nothing and nothing reads it.

Units are compared, never converted. Feeding °C into a kelvin slot is a warning for you to resolve; Quodra will not silently rescale a number behind your back.

How the plots behave#

Diffraction, spectra, stress–strain and Gibbs curves share one plotting layer, so they behave identically.

• Hover anywhere and the read-out follows, naming each series and its nearest sample at that position.
• Colour is never the only identity. The series palette is Okabe–Ito, ordered so the colours stay distinguishable under the common dichromacies, and each series also gets its own dash pattern.
• Decimation keeps the peaks. Above 2,400 drawn points a series is min/max bucketed — every pixel column keeps its lowest and highest sample — so thinning a long scan cannot flatten a peak.
• Error bands draw under their series where a series carries error values.
• Construction lines — a common tangent, an offset line — are drawn in data coordinates, so they stay attached when the axes change.
• Axis conventions follow the technique: FTIR and XPS read right-to-left, and each preset labels its own units.

Walking a plot by keyboard#

Click or tab to any plot and the keyboard walks the first series' own samples: ← and → step one sample at a time, Shift makes it ten, Home and End jump to the ends, Esc clears. The read-out follows each step, and the same text is the plot's screen-reader description. Where a plot has a reading cursor, the arrows drive the cursor too. Arrow keys inside a plot never nudge the object.

Notes, pinned to the data#

Diffraction, spectra, stress–strain and Gibbs objects each have a Notes section in the inspector. Type the words in New note, press Place on the plot, and click where they belong: the note is pinned in data coordinates, so it stays on its peak when the axes move. Notes appear in previews and PDF/image captures; Matter objects currently become placeholders in PowerPoint. Existing notes can be re-worded or removed from the same section.

Scientific states#

Any Matter object's inspector has a Scientific states section. Type a name — the placeholder suggests e.g. Quenched — and press Save. The state captures every parameter on the deck by name, plus the view settings that type considers worth freezing: a crystal keeps its camera, representation and supercell; a phase diagram keeps its state point; a diffraction object keeps its 2θ range; a spectrum keeps its axis window; a stress–strain curve keeps its cursor and value kind.

Saved states appear as chips on the object. Click one while editing or presenting and the deck tweens there over roughly six-tenths of a second, easing in and out, so a temperature ramp reads as a ramp; the whole glide is one undo step. Apply in the inspector cuts straight there instead. Names, not internal ids, are what a state stores, so a state survives a panel being rebuilt — and a choice whose option list no longer contains the saved value is skipped rather than allowed to break a talk.

Who may move what#

Each parameter carries its own policy, under Who may move it in the parameter panel's inspector:

• Presenting — Editable, Locked, or Hidden (not rendered at all while presenting or shared).
• Audience — Editable or Locked for supported audience surfaces; this setting does not enable controls or recomputation in the current shared-link viewer.
• On re-entry — Keep value or Reset, for a demo that must always start clean.

Panels can also hold choices: named options such as a crystal's representation, bound to a choice slot. A choice refuses a value outside its option list rather than clamping to one.

What it refuses to do#

The refusals are the point, so they are worth stating plainly.

• A diffraction pattern is not simulated for elements outside the scattering-factor table; the refusal names them.
• An imported pattern never gets a guessed (hkl) mapping — only a pattern computed from a structure knows its planes.
• A phase diagram with boundary curves but no regions cannot answer the lever rule, and says so.
• Distances and areas on an uncalibrated micrograph read in pixels, and the scale bar refuses to draw at all.
• A structure file is displayed, never energy-minimised — Matter Lab is the explanation layer, not the simulator.
• Runs past the viewer's atom and grid limits are refused rather than quietly thinned into something else.

Data & methods#

Every Matter object carries an optional provenance record — Source, Method, Citation, Sample — with a badge counting the gaps. Missing fields warn; they never block, because an idea sketched at 23:00 must not be stopped by a citation box. Imports report exactly what they skipped or thinned, derived numbers carry their method, and anything illustrative — a teaching envelope, a regular-solution model, a straight-segment diagram — labels itself on the slide.

Every file you import is archived by checksum and can be handed back to you unchanged. See Datasets & instrument files.

Next#

• The object types — every object, field by field.
• Datasets & instrument files — formats, the archive, and full-run playback.
• Tutorial: steel, heat & structure — build the sample lecture yourself.
• Reactive documents — the parameter system all of this plugs into.