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Filter Manager

The Filter Manager holds the optics library — the filters and dichroic mirrors available to filter cube turrets and filter wheels across every configuration. An element defined here is not tied to a single configuration: pick the same catalog reference in any turret slot table and it points back to this one shared definition.

Open it from Settings > Filter Manager, or click Manage Filters in the header of a filter column of the turret editor. Opened from a turret, the Filter Manager starts on a new element of the kind that column lists.

The editor layout

Filter Manager, with the Optics Library sidebar, the identification fields, the range tables, and the Light Spectrum Visualizer annotated

  1. Optics Library (1): Filters and Dichroics switch which of the two libraries the sidebar lists. The search box filters that list. + New Filter (or + New Dichroic) creates a blank entry; the copy, save, and trash icons above the list duplicate, save, or delete the selected entry. Import Catalog… merges a vendor XML file into the library, and Restore Default Library resets it to the shipped set.
  2. Identification (2): Name, Type, Manufacturer, and Model for the selected entry. Manufacturer lists Semrock and Chroma, then every manufacturer already named in the library; another name can be typed. The gear icon opens Advanced parameters — the read-only Identifier, the Catalog Number, the Lot Number, and any other optional attribute that applies to that element's type.
  3. Range tables (3): Transmittance Ranges, present for both filters and dichroics. Editing a Dichroic adds a second Reflectance Ranges table next to it, since a dichroic mirror both transmits and reflects.
  4. Light Spectrum Visualizer (4): Plots the ranges from the tables across the visible spectrum, so a band's position and width can be checked at a glance.

Filters and dichroics

Kind Represents Range tables
Filter A single optical filter — bandpass, longpass, shortpass, notch, multipass, bandstop, or other. Transmittance only.
Dichroic A dichroic mirror, which splits light by reflecting one band and transmitting another. Transmittance and Reflectance.

Both are stored and searched separately: switching the toggle switches the list, the + New… button label, and which range tables are shown.

Recording a range

Column Description
# The row's position; purely informational.
λ (nm) The center wavelength of the band.
FWHM (nm) The full width at half maximum — the band's width. Leave the row alone for a longpass or shortpass edge, where the cut is a single wavelength rather than a band.
Transmission (or Reflectance) The fraction of light passed (or reflected) at the peak, from 0 to 1.

Click + above a table to add a row, or the × at the end of a row to remove it.

A new filter starts as a BandPass filter with one Transmittance range of 500 nm and 20 nm FWHM; a new dichroic starts with one range at 500 nm without FWHM.

Naming shortcut

Typing a wavelength into Name — for example Cy5 Emission 690/50, or just 690/50 — reshapes the starting range with that center and width, and a name without a wavelength restores the starting values. A wavelength is read only as a three-digit center between 300 nm and 900 nm, optionally followed by a width (525, 525/50, FF01-525/50); catalog numbers such as 49002 are ignored. The turret slot table reads names with the same rule. This only ever touches the starting row: editing that range by hand, or adding a second one, stops the name from overwriting it. A LongPass or ShortPass type, or a name the editor reads as a dichroic, fills in the wavelength alone, since FWHM does not apply to a cut edge.

Name and Identifier

Name is a free-text label you can change at any time. The Identifier shown in Advanced parameters is generated once, when the entry is first saved, and never changes afterward — it is what a turret slot table actually stores when you assign a filter. Renaming an entry later cannot orphan a configuration that already references it.

Importing a vendor catalog

Import Catalog… reads an NBOList XML file — the same format the library itself is stored in — and adds any filter or dichroic it does not already have. A summary reports how many elements were added, how many were already present, how many were renamed to avoid a collision, and how many were rejected.

Keyboard shortcuts

Shortcut Action
Ctrl+S Save the selected entry.
Delete Delete the selected entry (outside a text field).
Ctrl+C Copy the selected entry.
Ctrl+V Paste the copied entry as a new duplicate.

Required to save

An entry needs a Name, a Type, and at least one Transmittance range before it can be saved. Leaving the editor with unsaved changes — by switching Filters/Dichroics, selecting another entry, or closing the window — prompts to save or discard them.

Next step: Proceed to Connections.