Scratchpad Dialog
Applicability: Cranium, Synapse (core versions 0315+)

Data found in publications can frequently be directly copied and pasted into Cranium and Synapse documents. Very often however, the data must first be modified or rearranged into the applications' tabular format. The Scratch Pad Edit dialog provides numerous tools for making such modifications and rearrangements.

For example, consider the liquid density data shown to the right taken from the reference: Diego Gómez-Díaz, Juan C. Mejuto and José M. Navaza. "Physicochemical Properties of Liquid Mixtures. 1. Viscosity, Density, Surface Tension and Refractive Index of Cyclohexane + 2,2,4-Trimethylpentane Binary Liquid Systems from 25 °C to 50 °C." Journal of Chemical and Engineering Data. Volume 46, number 3, page 720-724, 2001.

The article's text states that the uncertainty in the temperature is ±0.05 °C and the uncertainty in the density is ±0.004 g/cm3.

2,2,4-Trimethylpentane + Cyclohexane at 25 °C
x1 [mol frac] ρ [g/cm3]
1.0000 0.6860
0.9238 0.6901
0.8517 0.6942
0.7834 0.6982
0.7185 0.7023
Example: Use the Scratch Pad Dialog to prepare data values for pasting
  1. Open a knowledge base document. (Open a "working" document or create a copy of a document (see here) if you are just experimenting with this functionality.)
  2. Change to the Mixtures Chapter and add a new blank page. (See the Navigation Overview documentation for details on navigating chapters and pages. See documentation on the Mixture Chapter for details on creating a new mixture.)
  3. Enter "2,2,4-Trimethylpentane + Cyclohexane" for the new mixture's identifier and 2,2,4-trimethylpentane and cyclohexane for the mixture's components. (See documentation on the Mixture Components Section for additional details.)
  4. Use the mouse to select and copy the values shown in the table at the top of this page.
  5. Within Cranium or Synapse, select the Scratchpad command from the Edit menu. The application activates the Scratchpad dialog.
  6. Click the left mouse button in the first cell, row 1 - column 01, and press the dialog's Paste button. The application will transfer values from the clipboard into the Scratchpad dialog.

    To paste values into Cranium or Synapse, we must have a table of values consisting of the temperature, composition of component 1, composition of component 2, and the data value. It is thus necessary to use the Scratchpad dialog to modify the current values.

  7. The first values we will add is the composition values for component 2. Click the left mouse button in cell R4-C3 and drag the mouse to cell R8-C3. The dialog will highlight the column of selected cells.
  8. Now press the dialog's Function button. The application will activate the Cell Function dialog.
  9. In the dialog's Function control, enter the following equation and then press the Calculate button:

    1-RCell(0,-2)

    The equation will be evaluated in each of the selected cells.

  10. We will next enter a column of values containing the density measurement uncertainty values, i.e., 0.004 g/cm3. Click the left mouse button on cell R4-C4 and drag the mouse to cell R8-C4. The dialog will highlight the column of selected cells.
  11. Now press the dialog's Function button. The application will activate the Cell Function dialog.
  12. Enter the value 0.004 into the dialog's Function control and press the Calculate button. This constant value will be inserted into each of the selected cells.
  13. Repeat this previous process to add the temperature value of 25.0 into cells R4-C5 through R8-C5 and the temperature accuracy of 0.05 into cells R4-C6 through R8-C6.
  14. Use the left mouse button to select all the entered values, i.e., cells R4-C1 through R8-C6. Then press the dialog's Copy button.
  15. Now press the dialog's Done button to close the Scratchpad dialog.
  16. On the page displaying the current mixture, scroll down to the Composition/Temperature Dependent Section.
  17. If needed, change the property units to match those of the input values given in the table at the top of this page. You can change property units by clicking on the edit control displaying the units value or by using the Options menu's Set Units command. (See the documentation on the Set Property Units Dialog for additional details.)
  18. Click the right mouse button within the section's large table control. The application will display the field's commands menu. Select the menu's Paste Special command.
  19. The application activates the Paste Special dialog. (See (here) for additional documentation.) This dialog enables you to select which data columns will be assigned to which data attributes. For this particular example, we have:
    Column 1 X,1 Column 4 Datum Accuracy
    Column 2 Datum Column 5 Temperature
    Column 3 X,2 Column 6 Temperature Accuracy
  20. Once all required columns have been specified, pressing the dialog's OK button will rearrange the data columns and paste them into the current field.
Dialog Operations

The Scratchpad Dialog provides capabilities for replacing text, appending values, trasposing cells, regressing data and many more operations. The following table details these capabilities.

1
Data Values: the dialog's large table enables both the display and selection of values. Each value is displayed within a table cell. Clicking the left mouse button within a cell selects that cell. Clicking the left mouse button within a cell and then dragging the mouse while continuing to hold the button down will select a range of cells.
2
Text Delimiters: when text is pasted into the dialog's table, it will be divided into a set of terms each of which will be entered into a separate table cell. The divisions will be made at each delimiter. The Text Delimiters set of controls enables you to specify which delimiters should be used for this term division. For example, if you copy a set of numbers from a spreadsheet, they are typically separated by tabs. Copying text from a Microft Word document or a PDF would typically results in terms separated by spaces. Thus, you would need to check the Space delimiter option for proper pasting.
3
Paste Delimiter Options: this option determines how consecutive delimiters are considered. For example, should a text string with two numbers separated by two spaces be pasted into two cells, where each cell contains a number, or three cells, where a blank cell is inserted between the two cells containing numbers because of the extra delimiter.
4
Edit: selecting a single cell and pressing the Edit button activates the Value Edit dialog.

You can enter any value into the dialog's Value control. Clicking the right mouse button within the edit control displays the standard commands menu which provides commands for copying, pasting, changing case and other functions. (See documentation on Common Menu Commands for additional details.)

5
Replace: very often when copying and pasting values from documents, additional characters such as footnotes, commas and spaces will also be included. Also, documents that have been processed using character recognition software sometimes contain errors in which a scanned character was misidentified as another character.

Selecting one or more table cells and pressing the dialog's Replace button, activates the Text Replacement Dialog.

Enter the substring you wish to replace in the Current Text String control and the text you wish to add in the Replacement Text String control. The dialog's List button displays a list of characters that commonly need to be replaced.

Also note that is very common to replace a character with a "blank", i.e., to enter a value into the Current Text String control and then to leave the Replacement Text String control empty.

6
Append: sometimes, despite the best selection of delimiters, pasted values are separated into tables cells when they actually represent a single term that should be in a single cell. Selecting a range of table cells and then pressing the Append button will result in all the values in a row being appended into a single term displayed in the leftmost row.

For example, consider the table cells shown in the following image:

Selecting the cells and pressing the dialog's Append button concatenates the terms of each row together placing the result in the leftmost cell.

The Append command inserts a space between appended cell values. If this is not the desired result, the Replace button can be used to remove these inserted spaces.

7
Insert: selecting a single cell and pressing the dialog's Insert button displays a submenu enabling you to choose commands for either Insert Down or Insert Right. Choosing the Insert Down command, will move all values in the selected column, starting with the selected row, one row downward. Choosing the Insert Right command, will move all values in the selected row, starting with the selected column, one column toward the right.
8
Clear: pressing the dialog's Clear button removes all values from the selected cells.
9
Clear All: pressing the dialog's Clear All button removes all values from the Data Values table.
10
Undo: pressing the dialog's Undo button will undo the last operation. Pressing the Undo button a second time will undo the previous undo, i.e., it is equivalent to a "redo" command.
11
Cut: copies values from the selected cells to the clipboard and then clears the values.
12
Copy: copies values from the selected cells to the clipboard.
13
Paste: pastes values from the clipboard into table cells. Note that only a single cell may be selected when executing the paste command. Values will be pasted in columns to right and rows below this selected cell.
14
Transpose: transfers the value from a selected cell to its corresponding tranposed cell. For example, a value in Row x, Column y will be transferred to Row y, Column x.

Transposing values is often needed when pasting tables. For example, the following image shows a common layout of temperature dependent values.

Selecting these cells and pressing the dialog's Transpose button will transfer the values to the cells shown in the image below.

Note that after transposing values, you can use the Replace button to remove the characters surrounding the temperature values before futher copying and pasting.

15
Function: pressing the Function button activates the Cell Function Dialog which enables you to insert calculated values into selected cells. For example, given the row of values shown in the following image:

we select several rows beneath the entered row, press the dialog's Function button and enter the following function terms:

Pressing the Cell Function Dialog's Calculate button will perform the calulation for each selected cell.

See documentation on the Cell Function Dialog for additional details.

16
Statistics: pressing the dialog's Statistics button performs basic calculations on the values in the selected cells and displays them in the Data Statistics Dialog.
17
Regress: selecting a range of cells and pressing the dialog's Regress button activates the Values Regression Dialog enabling you to regress one column of values against functions of one or more other columns of values. (At least two rows and two columns of values must be selected in order to perform a regression.)

See documentation on the Values Regression Dialog for details.

18
Add Rows: appends additional rows onto the bottom of the Data Values table.
19
Add Columns: appends additional rows onto the righthand side of the Data Values table.
Related Documentation
Topic Description
Getting Started using Synapse provides a quick tour of Synapse's capabilities including examples of chemical product design.
Getting Started using Cranium provides a quick tour of Cranium's capabilities including a discussion of structure editing.
Estimating Chemical Properties a short video demonstrating how to estimate the physical properties of chemicals using either Synapse or Cranium.
Estimating Mixture Properties a short video demonstrating how to estimate the physical properties of mixtures using either Synapse or Cranium.