Welcome to McStasScript’s documentation!

McStasScript is a Python API for McStas, which allows the user to get help, build their instrument, perform simulations and plot the resulting data. This site serves as the documentation for the package and contains conceptual explanations of how the package is meant to be used, tutorials and a reference for all internal functions/methods.

Documentation

Getting started

• Overview
  • McStas / McXtrace simulations
  • McStasScript
• Installation
  • Pip
  • From source
  • Configuration
  • Tests
• Version history
  • 0.0.86 - 24th of July 2026
  • 0.0.85 - 9th of July 2026
  • 0.0.83 - 18th of June 2026
  • 0.0.80 - 23rd of April 2026
  • 0.0.78 - 20th of February 2026
  • 0.0.75 - 19th of August 2025
  • 0.0.73 - 8th of November 2024
  • 0.0.71 - 11th of September 2024
  • 0.0.68 - 25th of July 2024
  • 0.0.64 - 1st of December 2023
  • 0.0.60 - 4th of August 2023
  • 0.0.58 - 25th of April 2023
  • 0.0.52 - 17th of November 2022
  • 0.0.51 - 17th of October 2022
  • 0.0.50 - 20th of June 2022
  • 0.0.48 - 10th of June 2022
  • 0.0.47 - 31th of May 2022
  • 0.0.44 - 16th of May 2022
• Quick start
  • Importing the package
  • Creating the first instrument object
  • Setting up the simulation
  • Plot the data

User guide

• Instrument object
  • Initialization
  • Parameters
  • Initialize section
  • Finally section
  • Help features
  • Adding components
  • Moving a component
  • Removing a component
  • Making a component copy
  • Getting components
  • Run the simulation
  • Visualizing the instrument
  • Dump and load an instrument object
• Component object
  • Creating a component object
  • Setting component parameters
  • Setting the component position and rotation
  • Using parameters in a component
  • Advanced features
• Parameters and variables
  • Parameters
  • Declared variables
  • User variables
  • Using parameters and variables
• Data
  • Example instrument
  • Generating data
  • McStasData objects
• Plotting
  • Example instrument
  • make_plot and make_sub_plot
  • Customizing plots
• Functions
  • load_data function
  • name_search
  • name_plot_options
• Widgets
  • Set up of an example instrument
  • Plotting interface
  • Simulation interface
  • Instrument diagram as a widget
• Instrument reader
  • Outdated instrument reader
  • Create a reader object
  • Create instrument object
  • Create a python script file

McStasScript Tutorial

• McStasScript introduction
• Advanced McStas features: SPLIT
• Advanced McStas features: EXTEND and WHEN
• Advanced McStas features: JUMP
• Dynamic instrument cuts with MCPL bridges
• Diagnostics

McStas Union Tutorial

• The Union components
• Advanced geometry using the Union components
• Visualizing what happens in Union master
• Using conditional component to modify loggers
• Union tutorial on masks
• Advanced geometry component concepts: Exit geometry and number of activations
• Union tagging system

mcstasscript
mcstasscript.data
mcstasscript.instr_reader
mcstasscript.interface
mcstasscript.jb_interface
mcstasscript.tools

libpyvinyl

Indices and tables

• Index

• Module Index

• Search Page