Rock Maker allows you to conduct searches on the data generated by your experiments. A search can help you determine something as simple as which plates were set up on a particular day or something as powerful as which wells formed crystals with a particular combination of ingredients.
When using Search and Filter, it works best if you first define the search criteria, run the search, and then apply "filters" to mine the data for the results you are interested in exploring.
The Search Target that you choose tells Rock Maker what part of the experiment results you are interested in exploring. seeking and determines which types of data will be included in the search results.
Options include:
The Search Path tells Rock Maker exactly where to conduct the search. You may want to search in only a single experiment, or you may decide to search an entire project folder. Whatever the search location, you can easily drag it from the Explorer and drop it into the Search Path box.
At this point, you can click the Search button to execute the Search, or you can tweak the search filters and add specific constraints.
Search Filters and Search Constraints are automatically applied based on what you choose in the Search Target list. For some search targets, such as Experiment, you can manually add search fields to the Search Filters area by dragging a search field from the Search Fields side panel to the Search Fields side panel, but unless you are an advanced user generally the default search fields are all you need.
Once your search is complete, the panel on the right will switch over to display the Instant Filters tab. Instant Filters allow you to break down your results dynamically and identify patterns from the results. Instant filters can be added and removed by dragging search fields and dropping them onto the Instant Filter tab. You can also specify which fields are to be shown in the results grid. This is done by dragging fields from the Search Fields list to the result grid.
Charts are visual representations of search results. You can select a predefined chart from the Predefined Charts list, or work with custom charts to generate graphs as required by selecting fields for the axes from drop-downs. You can also interact with the graph to drill down into the search results.
Search results can be exported to a text file for further analysis.