GenX News

Hi everyone,

I'm happy to announce that a new paper has been published about GenX 3.6 that is available open access at https://doi.org/10.1107/S1600576722006653 . I would appreciate if you would cite this reference for any future publications based on GenX 3:
A. Glavic and M. Björck J. Appl. Cryst. 55, 1063-1071 (2022)

In addition to summing up the important changes since the original GenX publication, the paper gives an introduction to possible corrections for experimental errors, beyond counting statistics, that can be the basis for a better statistic analysis of parameter uncertainties.
I have also created a YouTube channel where I link existing Tutorial videos and will guide you through the GenX documentation with individual future videos. ( https://www.youtube.com/user/knuekopp666 )... read more

Hi everyone,

as an early Christmas present of this year I have a new major revision of GenX with a bag full of goodies.

• One feature that many may have longed for since the start of GenX is an undo/redo functionality. With this you can revert changes to the model script as well as single and multiple parameters. Actions can even be reverted retroactively without touching other changes you did later in a history dialog.
• Update of several tutorials in the documentation and new tutorial for the usage of bumps for parameter uncertainty estimation.
• Option to start logging to a file from within the GUI to simplify bug reporting.
• Updated ORSO .ort format (now requires orsopy package) and new feature to build a model from .ort file meta data. (Also from exported .ort files, directly.)
• Better feedback on startup progress, especially first time start when compiling numba functions.
• For all Changes, see the README.txt file.... read more

This summer brought a cascade of updates to your favorite fitting program. After a few hiccups due to major changes in version 3.4.0 this series has now reached a stable state again. This is a good occasion to inform you of the goodies I've been adding in the last four months moving to version 3.3 and 3.4:

• The documentation has been updated with more videos and tutorials, including the SimpleReflectivity interface that was introduced in 3.0
• Models for surface x-ray and off-specular scattering have been re-implemented and should make GenX 3 a full replacement for the older program
• Improved data loaders with an automatic selection of suitable plug-ins (default, resolution, sns_mr, amor, d17_cosmos and orso)
• Fittable "systematic error" parameters that include a penalty factor to the FOM.
• Additional optimizer options (fast Levenberg-Marquardt and Bumps Marcov-Chain Monte-Carlo)
• GUI improvements, including drag&drop of data-files onto the dataset list and new dialog to create plots with specific designs for publication
• Significant performance improvements, especially for simple models
• Many bug fixes... read more

It's time for another major release of your favorite reflectometry package with a bunch of new goodies to play with. These are the main improvements in v 3.2:

• A new simple scripting API that you can access by using from genx import api in your code. It includes nice IPython widget support for your Jupyter notebook. Have a look at the examples provided with the package. (The genx package has to be installed in your python environment or available in PYTHONPATH.)
• A new dialog for statistical analysis of fit parameters that is available from the toolbar. It's based on the integration of GenX to the bumps package that can also be used from scripting for more elaborate analysis tasks.
• Handling of meta data for imported datasets and an alpha version of exporting to the new ORSO text format .ort. For properly implemented data loaders the model now keeps this information with you datasets and exports it including the model script and parameters for full trackability. A new information button can be used to browse through that data.
• A new auto data loader that selects the proper loading procedure by file suffix. Right now only Amor@PSI and MR@SNS as well as the default and resolution loaders are supported. If you want your instrument format to be supported, please write a similar data loader or send me example files with some format specifications.
• Several improvements to the GUI as well as to calculation and plotting performance under the hood.... read more

Thanks to a contribution by Leon Lohse from UNI Göttingen, the GenX build system was updated which allowed direct upload to the Python Package Index (PyPI)
https://pypi.org/project/genx3/

On an existing python environment with wxPython installed you can now use pip to install GenX as user or root:

pip3 install --user genx3
or
sudo pip3 install genx3

As all of you know, GenX is scientific software and thus correctness is as important as features and usability. To make sure there is quality control for the fundamental functions of x-ray and neutron reflectometry we have therefore joined the effort of the Open Reflectometry Standards Organization's (ORSO) effort of benchmarking various reflectometry suites agains a common set of standard systems.... read more

Hi Everybody,

the implementation of performance improvements for GenX 3.1 has made faster progress than expected. I was able to achieve sizable performance gains by making use of the Numba Just In Time (JIT) compiler package. While the gains strongly depend on the model, computer hardware and operation system they can reach 3-30x improvement over the normal, Numpy based, calculation. For those of you with Nvidia® graphics cards, implementation of CUDA GPU computing can add another factor of 2-4x on top of that.... read more

Hi Everybody,

I'm happy to announce that, finally, the GenX version 3.0.0 is now released. This version is based on the lates libraries and has some nice improvements like the new SimpleReflectivity interface for beginners and simple models.

As a lot of the background code had to be modified to make the program work with the library changes there will probably be new bugs that I did not catch. Please report them through the Ticket system on SourceForge.... read more

Happy New Decade GenX users!

The release of GenX 3 is getting closer. The first version of the SimpleReflectivity interface is implemented and builds for Linux and Windows 10 are running. If you want a preview of this exciting release and help me with hunting down some of the bugs, feel free to test the beta release that was just uploaded.

Good news everybody! While there hasn't been an update on GenX for two years things are again starting to move forward. I want to thank Matts, who is unfortunately no longer able to provide support, for all his hard work he put into this project. I will take over the maintenance and development with new enthusiasm. ... read more

A small bug fix release that corrects the following bugs:
* Fixed autoscaling bug for log-scale
* Fixed bug with selecting multiple data sets
* Added a new type of parameter classes - preparatory work for a 2.5 release
* Added calculations of reflected fields to spec_nx

A new bug fix release to correct a small bug under OS X:
* Could not load cif files under OSX

A new bug fix release is availble. The following bugs has been corrected:
* Fixed bug that delete and backspace did not work in the parameter grid under Windows.
* Fixed so that data can be loaded with the resolution data loader.
* Fixed bug in the SimpleLayer plugin.
* Small bug fixes in parameter and data model classes

Three small bug fixed in the current release:
* Fixed bug, parallel fitting with mag_refl stopped in "going into optimisation".
* Fixed bug with adding data sets into a new reflectivity plugin model.
* Fixed wrong spin state calculations in soft_nx

A new bug fix release is out. Note that the windows build has been redone today since some users experienced problems with first build. The fix concerns the calcualtion of the calcualtion of SLD for neutron reflectivity which was acciedently scaled with wl**2/2/pi.

The following bugs/issues has been corrected:
The 2.4 series had a bug that scaled the sld with wavelength^2/2/pi.
Precision problems could arise in some cases in the spec_nx model when simualting neutrons.
Using GenX on systems with a comma as decimal seprator, especially entering values in the grid.
Issue with scanning a parameter has been resolved.

A bug fix release is available. Fixes bugs in spec_nx and mag_refl reg. negative scattering lengths for neutrons. See the readme file for details.

In the new release sliders has been added to the grid for interactive parameter exploration. A new model suitable for soft matter x-ray and neutron reflectivity has been added. Logarithmic x-axis is now possible. It is possible to igonore NaN's and Inf's in the FOM. New contributed plugin's from Artur Glavic has been added (data laoder for SNS BL4 data and a layer definition aid). Also various bug fixes has been fixed.

A new bug fix (mainly) release is out. This correct a number of issues reported see the README file for more details.

A Bug fix release of GenX is available. It fixes problem with windows installations not working and problems with the new file format. And some minor bugs found, see the README file.

There is a bug in the windows installer which causes GenX not to start after installation. This is due to that configuration files are not copied to the right system folder. A new version will be released soon.

There has been an bug in the os-x app. The program failed to start on some installations. This is fixed now and it should work (fixed in GenX-2.3.3-2-OSX.dmg).

A new version of GenX is available. A number of improvements from the user community has been incorporated. See the README file for more information.

A new paper describing the magnetic model used in GenX's mag_refl module is available from http://dx.doi.org/10.1166/jsim.2014.1032. For the citation details see http://genx.sf.net/publ.html.

A user, Mingda Li, has published a video tutorial as how to fit a PNR data set. It can found at http://youtu.be/pCj3QhCLOnU