Feature Overview

Gives an overview over the central features of the MTEX toolbox.

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Analyze and Visualize Crystallographic Geometries
Calculate with Model ODFs
Import, Analyze and Visualize Diffraction Data
Import, Analyze and Visualize EBSD Data
Recover Orientation Density Functions (ODFs)
Calculate Texture Characteristics
Create Publication Ready Plots
Writing Scripts to Process Many Data Sets

Analyze and Visualize Crystallographic Geometries

In MTEX you can define arbitrary crystal and specimen symmetries with arbitrary geometries using the class symmetry. Miller indice may be plotted in various spherical projections, the angle between two Miller indices can be computed or all crystallographically equivalent directions can be computed. Orientations can be specified in terms of different Euler angle conventions, in terms of Rodrigues parameters, matrices or axis - angle parametrization. Orientations can be applied to Miller indices, ODFs, pole figure data, and EBSD data to perform rotations. Have also a look at the Crystal Geometry help page.

Calculate with Model ODFs

In MTEX it is very simple to define a model ODF as a uniform ODFs, a unimodal ODFs, a fibre ODFs, a Bingham ODF, or any superposition of these components. Furthermore, the MTEX toolbox allready contains some popular standard ODF as the SantaFe and the mix2 sample ODFs. How to better work model ODFs in MTEX can be found here.

Import, Analyze and Visualize Diffraction Data

Up to now MTEX already supports a wide range of pole figure formats. Furthermore, there is a generic interface that allows to import pole figure data that are stored in ASCII files in the theta - rho - intensity notation.

It is also very simple to write your own interface using the powerful generic methods provided by MTEX. Once the data are imported by you, there are many methods to analyze and modify them. The Dubna Demo is a practical example demostrating how to apply MTEX for pole figure analysis.

Import, Analyze and Visualize EBSD Data

MTEX provides a generic interface for EBSD data. This interface allows to extract orientations and phase informations from almost arbitrary Ascii files. EBSD data may be used for reconstruction, Fourier coefficient estimation, etc. In fact all methods that are available for ODFs may be applied to ODFs estimated from EBSD. In particular it is possible to compare ODFs estimated from EBSD data with those estimated from pole figure data using the command calcError. Another useful command in MTEX is calcEBSD which allows to simulate EBSD data for a given ODF.

A practical guide to EBSD data analysis with MTEX can be found here.

Recover Orientation Density Functions (ODFs)

Using the method calcODF MTEX allows you to recover an ODF from your pole figure data. This method is based on a discretization of the ODF space by radially symmetric function and on the fast spherical Fourier transform. The algorithms has proven to be very stable and adaptive, in particular to very sharp textures with low symmetry.

There are also several options like regularization, resolution, zero_range_method, ghost_correction that allow addopt the estimation method for your presonal needs.

A detailed description of the ODF reconstruction from pole figure data can be found at ODF Estimation. The problem of ghost effect is discussed in greater detail in Ghost Demo.

In order to recover an ODF from EBSD data the method calcODF has to be called. It computes a ODF to your EBSD data using kernel density estimation.

Calculate Texture Characteristics

MTEX offers to compute a wide range of texture characteristics like modal orientation, entropy, texture index, or volume portion to be computed for any model ODF or any recoverd ODF. You can also calculate the Fourier coefficients using the command Fourier. Furthermore, you can compare arbitrary ODF independently whether they are model ODFs, ODFs estimated from pole figure data or estimated from EBSD data. The ODF Analysis Demo gives an overview over the texture characteristic that can be computed using MTEX.

Create Publication Ready Plots

Founded on the state of the art MATLAB plotting routines, MTEX allows you to create professional plots of pole figures, inverse pole figures, and ODF sections. There are also many plotting options to adapt the plots to the specific standards of the journal you want to submit your paper. Plots may be saved in any image format, e.g. as pdf, jpg, png, eps, tiff, bmp. This is described in more detail in the Plot Demo.

Writing Scripts to Process Many Data Sets

Using the MTEX toolbox it is easy to write little scripts that import pole figure data, pre-process them, recalculate an ODF, post-process it, store it to a given location and finaly create several plots. Such scripts can be easily applied to batch process many pole figure data sets. Examples of those scripts are included in the help.