Tagging

Tagging

Overview

In PlateEditor, the process of assigning [Areas] or a [Concentration] to a well is referred to as Tagging and is achieved using the Tag buttons available in the [Menu Panel].
For any tagging to succeed, wells must first be selected on any layer of the plate. The area to tag must also be selected from the Areas available table under the Areas group of the [Menu Panel].

Well selection

Wells can be selected using a click-and-drag process, by maintaining the left mouse button pressed down and drawing a selection box (or lasso) over them. For users with touch-screen device, use a touch-and-drag to achieve equivalent results: press the finger on the first well and drag to select the desired wells.
Wells within the selection will be highlighted by a yellow background (1). The tooltip will indicate the size of the selection box in rows per columns, in the following format: R #r × #c C, with #r the number of rows and #c the number of columns.
Entire rows or columns can be selected by clicking or dragging on their headers (2). The top left corner is responsive to selection events as well and will trigger selection of the entire plate.
After releasing the left mouse button (or your finger), wells will become selected and will be marked with a blue border.
Starting a new selection will unselect previously selected wells, unless the "Multiple" option is ticked or the CTRL key pressed down. In both cases, new wells will be added to the previous selection (3). Note that this also allows to make selections spanning multiple layers.

Keep Selection
After tagging, the selection will be maintained per default, to allow quick tagging of areas and concentrations together, without the need of reselecting the same bloc of wells.
This option can be changed by unticking the Keep Selection box located in the Options group of the Layout Panel (4).

The current selection can also be released by clicking the Unselect button located in the Options group of the Layout Panel (5).

Views
The Views group of the Layout Panel (6) provides additional ways to survey the current well assignement:

• Types: provides a summary view of the area types tagged for each well, as a single table created by merging all layers. Area types are Sample (S), Positive Control (+), Negative Control (-), Range (R) and Mixed (M+/-).
  Mixed types are present when controls and samples tagged on distinct layers overlap on the same well. This will not be possible in Strict Mode, see the Tagging Areas section below for more details.
  Note also that when Ranges and Samples overlap each other, the output will be Sample (S).
• Plates: provides a summary of the name resolved for the available Ranges. This also allows selection of the plate used for information displayed in the tooltip. See the [Ranges] and [Definitions] pages for more information.
• Conc: provides a view of the concentration data for the selected layer, with a color heatmap representation.

Tagging Areas

An area can be tagged to a group of wells, first by selecting all the relevant items (the area to tag and the wells) then clicking on the Tag button available under the Areas group of the [Menu Panel].
The tagging process is affected by two options available under the Areas group of the [Menu Panel].

Lock Area
This option controls whether wells already containing an area should be locked and their content protected from being replaced by a new tagging.
If turned on, this will prevent wells already containing an area from being tagged with a new area. The wells will be marked in error.
If turned off, the previous area will be removed and the new area tagged instead.
Note that in both cases, when attempting to tag an area in a well already containing that same area, the tagging will be ignored and the well marked as duplicate.

Strict Mode
This option defines whether Sample and Range area types are allowed to overlap with Control area types.
If turned on, areas of type controls (negative or positive) will not be allowed to overlap with type samples or ranges. Wells will be marked in error if attempting to tag incompatible area types.
If turned off, no restriction applies and Sample / Range areas can freely overlap with controls. Such overlap will be indicated as Mixed (M), M+ for positive control overlap, M- for negative control overlap.
Note that in both cases, overlap of positive and negative controls is not allowed and will result in a tagging error.
Activation of strict mode will be prevented if wells with mixed types are present in the plate, and the corresponding wells marked in error.

Tagging feedback and Well states
Results of the tagging process will be indicated in the Console, at the top of the page (1).

If all wells were tagged successfully, a success message (green) indicating the number of wells involved will be displayed. If the tagging partially succeeded (or failed), a warning message (orange) will indicate the number of wells tagged. If none of the wells were tagged, an error message (red) will be shown.
The highlighting for wells in which a tagging error was encountered will change, to reflect the nature of the issue:

• If the well was already tagged with the same area, this tagging will be ignored and the well state change to "Duplicate". This will be indicated by an orange border (2).
• If the area types are not compatible (Strict Mode) or if the well already contains an area and the Lock Areas option is activated, the well state will change to "Error", indicated by a red border (3).

Tagging Concentrations

Concentrations can be tagged to a group of wells similarly to areas, first by selecting the relevant wells, then applying the desired concentrations using either the Tag (single concentration) or Tag DRC (dose-response) buttons available in the Concentration group of the [Menu Panel].
For more information about the configuration and options for dose-responses, see the [Concentration] page.