ACH Diffraction Analysis Suite

PXRD and TOPAS analysis tools for the lab: Pawley fit setup, cell-parameter prefitting, publication plotting, quick pattern comparison, and lattice-parameter tables. Five commands, one install.

pip install ach-diffraction-suite

Command	Tool	What it does
rp	wizard	Interactive wizard generating TOPAS Pawley .inp files from CIFs
pf	prefit	GUI cell-parameter tuning before a fit (sliders per crystal system)
pp	plotter	Publication plots of a finished Pawley fit
pq	quickplot	Quick stacked comparison of raw patterns
pt	tables	HTML lattice-parameter tables from a batch of .out files
achdiff	—	Manage profiles, config and your own command aliases

The hand-written .cmd shims are no longer needed — pip puts real executables on PATH. Delete the old shims to avoid them shadowing the installed commands.

Changed in 0.2.0: prefit moved from ppf to pf, tables from pf to pt, and quickplot from pxp to pq. Note that pf now runs prefit, not tables. If you prefer different names, see Custom command names.

Updating

pip install --upgrade ach-diffraction-suite

One command updates all five tools. Your configuration is not touched: it lives in the user config directory, outside the installed package, so an upgrade structurally cannot overwrite it.

Custom command names

The five commands above are pip entry points: pip writes real executables into the environment's Scripts directory when the package is installed. Nothing in a config file can rename them afterwards, because your shell needs an actual file on PATH to find.

A shorthand you choose therefore has to be an additional file, which achdiff creates for you:

achdiff alias set plot plotter      # now `plot` runs the plotter
achdiff alias set tbl tables
achdiff alias list                  # built-ins plus your own
achdiff alias remove plot

Tool names for the second argument: plotter, wizard, prefit, tables, quickplot.

Aliases are recorded in your config, so they survive upgrades. A reinstall can clear the Scripts directory though — achdiff alias sync recreates them all. achdiff alias list marks any that have gone missing.

Everyone on a shared machine writes to the same Scripts directory, so aliases are shared too. Pick names that won't confuse a colleague, and note that achdiff refuses to overwrite a built-in command or any file it did not create.

Your CIF library, and per-person settings

Everyone shares one Windows login on the TOPAS PCs, so the tools identify people by ID, using the same 2–3 letter prefix already used on sample names (CN-sample1.xy).

First run: register yourself

achdiff profile set -u CN cif_loc="D:\Workfolder\<you>\CIF_LOC"

That writes a profile for CN. Add other settings the same way, either at once or later — they merge rather than replace:

achdiff profile set -u CN qall=true      # pp shows all three quality factors
achdiff profile unset -u CN qall         # back to the default
achdiff profile list                     # who is registered, and with what

Unknown setting names are rejected rather than stored, so a typo can't sit in your config being silently ignored. From then on, working in a directory of your own CN- prefixed samples, the tools pick it up automatically:

One shared library for everyone

--global writes [defaults] instead of one person's profile, so a machine can be set up once and used without anyone passing -u:

achdiff profile set --global cif_loc="D:\Workfolder\Shared\CIF_LOC"
achdiff profile unset --global cif_loc     # back to the built-in

Profiles still win over it, so someone with their own library keeps it and everyone else falls back to the shared one.

$ pp -s -c
[*] Profile: CN  (from sample-name prefix)

How a tool decides who you are

First match wins:

1. -u CN on the command line
2. ACH_USER=CN in the environment
3. the sample-name prefix of files in the working directory — only if that prefix is a registered profile
4. otherwise no profile: [defaults] applies

Step 3 is deliberately restricted to registered IDs. The prefix pattern [A-Z]{2,3}- also matches material names this lab works with daily — ZIF-4, ZIF-62, MOF-5, MIL-101 — and an unrestricted match would read those as people. An unregistered prefix is never adopted; the tools fall back to defaults rather than silently loading someone else's CIF library. The chosen profile and where it came from are always printed.

Setting precedence

CLI flag  >  environment variable  >  [profiles.<ID>]  >  [defaults]  >  built-in

CIF_LOC still works as an environment variable, as it always has for prefit — and now the other four tools honour it too.

set CIF_LOC=D:\Workfolder\<you>\CIF_LOC     # this shell session only

The config file

%APPDATA%\ach-diffraction\config.toml, safe to hand-edit:

[defaults]
cif_loc = 'D:\Workfolder\Shared\CIF_LOC'

[profiles.CN]
cif_loc   = 'D:\Workfolder\<you>\CIF_LOC'
topas_exe = 'C:\TOPAS7	c.exe'
qall      = true        # pp shows R_wp, R_exp and chi by default

[profiles.AB]
cif_loc = 'D:\Workfolder\<colleague>\CIF_LOC'

Profiles store settings, not command-line flags, so an explicit flag always wins for a single run. A profile with qall = true can still be read normally — the setting decides the default, the flag decides the invocation.

Set ACH_CONFIG_DIR to relocate the whole config (useful for a portable install or for testing against a throwaway config).

Trusted starting parameters

A Pawley refinement converges much better when it starts from a cell close to the truth. Once a fit has converged, register its cell so the wizard seeds the next one with it:

achdiff trusted add ZIF-4 --from CN-sample_pawley_01.out -u CN
achdiff trusted list -u CN

The values are read straight out of the .out, uncertainties and all, so nothing is retyped. For a multi-phase fit the command lists the phases and asks which one with --phase-index. achdiff trusted set takes values by hand when the .out is long gone.

From then on rp applies them automatically and says where each came from:

[*] Trusted parameters for ZIF-4 (a, b, c from CN-sample_pawley_01.out)

Trusted parameters are per person and are never shared implicitly. Yours are a refined result for your sample on your instrument; inheriting a colleague's would silently seed a refinement with a cell that was never measured on your material. Two people can register the same phase name with different values and neither affects the other. Nothing ships with the package, so a new user starts with an empty set rather than someone else's numbers.

Replacing a set as your fits improve

Re-register the phase. No flag, no need to remove it first — the new cell simply replaces the old one, and the command shows what it changed:

$ achdiff trusted add ZIF-4 --from CN-better_pawley_01.out
[+] ZIF-4 updated for CN:
      a   = 15.484356`_0.000738   (was 15.475318`_0.000986)
      b   = 15.511304`_0.000704   (was 15.513932`_0.000957)
      c   = 18.103277`_0.000892   (unchanged)
    replaces the set from CN-first_pawley_01.out on 2026-07-22

A cell is replaced as a whole set, never merged parameter by parameter — mixing a from one refinement with c from another describes a cell that was never observed. If the new set has fewer parameters than the old one, the dropped ones are listed so the loss is visible rather than silent.

achdiff trusted import is the exception: it does refuse to overwrite without --force, because it can replace many phases at once from a file you did not write. A single add from a .out you just chose is a different risk.

Sharing is possible, but only as a deliberate act:

achdiff trusted export -u CN -o cn.toml     # hand the file to a colleague
achdiff trusted import cn.toml -u AB        # refuses to clobber without --force

The tools

rp — Pawley input wizard, and refinement runner

rp                     # interactive wizard: build a new .inp
rp myfit.inp           # run TOPAS on an existing .inp and exit

Walks through data file, phases, instrument, background, naming, and comments, then writes a TOPAS .inp and optionally launches the refinement.

Given a filename it skips the wizard entirely and just runs the refinement — for .inp files you have edited by hand, so you never type the full path to tc.exe. The engine runs with its working directory set to the .inp's own folder, so relative Out_X_Yobs(...) paths land beside it rather than wherever you happened to be standing. TOPAS's exit code is reported and passed through.

The engine location is a setting, not a hardcoded path:

achdiff profile set -u CN topas_exe="C:\TOPAS7	c.exe"
set TOPAS_EXE=C:\TOPAS6	c.exe        # this shell only
rp myfit.inp --topas "C:\TOPAS7	c.exe"

It defaults to C:\TOPAS7 c.exe, which is what the original script assumed.

Background options, in menu order: a zeroed polynomial (6 coefficients, the safe starting point for any holder), the pre-refined silicon and plastic holder presets, and a zeroed polynomial with a coefficient count you type in.

.brml inputs auto-detect anode, monochromator, goniometer radius and Soller angles, deriving a Full_Axial_Model line.

pf — prefit

Loads CIF phases plus an experimental pattern and gives you sliders — restricted to the parameters the detected crystal system allows — to line simulated peaks up with observed ones. Useful when the CIF was collected at a different temperature than the powder data. Prints a ready-to-paste TOPAS macro call.

pp — Pawley plotter

pp                                  # interactive windows
pp -s -c                            # save SVGs with unit-cell boxes
pp -s -c -x png --qall              # PNGs, all three quality factors
pp -s -m 20,40,10                   # multiply intensity in 2θ ∈ [20°, 40°] by 10
pp -s -r "(ZIF-8,10,magenta)"       # overlay reflections simulated from a CIF

Auto-discovers TOPAS output groups in the current directory. -r overlays reflections from phases that are not in the fit — the Bragg tick rows come from TOPAS's own 2Th_Ip files, so this is the complementary check for whether an unexplained feature belongs to a suspected impurity.

pq — quickplot

pq -i a.xy b.xy --stack             # stacked comparison
pq -i *.brml -s -x png              # save without a window

Reads .xy, .raw, .brml, .dat, PDF-card XML exports. Same -r reflection overlay as pp.

Bruker .raw (RAW1.01) files are decoded natively — no TOPAS conversion step, so plotting works on a machine without a TOPAS licence. The reader was verified against PowDLL's RIET7 export: identical 2θ grid, identical intensities. Older RAW generations (RAW2/3/4) are not covered and still need PowDLL or TOPAS to convert; they raise a message saying so rather than plotting nonsense.

pt — lattice-parameter tables

Interactive selection of .out files, producing an HTML table of refined cell parameters with crystallographic rounding.

A multi-phase refinement gets one column per phase. The filename stays the heading and the phase is a suffix: OJ-9_cryst.out (ZIF-62). The suffix comes from phase_name, else from the wizard's Selected phases: header (matched by space group, not by position), else from the space group itself. Since one fit can contain the same space group — or the same name — more than once, anything that repeats gets a running index from zero: (SG 61 #0), (SG 61 #1). Single-phase files are headed with the filename alone, as before. Fit-quality factors describe the whole refinement, so they repeat across a file's columns.

The table template and space-group lookup come from resource.htm, a real file shipped with the package rather than a blob compiled into the source. To use your own:

pt --resource "D:\path	o\your
esource.htm"
set ACH_RESOURCE_HTM=D:\path	o\your
esource.htm    # or set it once

Parsing 900 KB of HTML takes about 1.4 s, so the derived data is cached after the first run (~19 ms thereafter). The cache key is a hash of the file's contents, so editing resource.htm invalidates it automatically — there is no regeneration step to forget. ACH_CACHE_DIR relocates the cache.

Requirements

Python ≥ 3.10. Dependencies install automatically: numpy, matplotlib, pymatgen, scipy, beautifulsoup4, platformdirs.

Development install

git clone https://github.com/ACH-Repo/ACH-Diffraction-Analysis-Suite.git
cd ACH-Diffraction-Analysis-Suite
pip install -e .
python tests/test_config_identity.py

Publishing a new version: see RELEASING.md.

Layout

src/achdiff/
├── config.py            # layered settings, profile storage
├── identity.py          # who is running this
├── core/
│   ├── rounding.py      # crystallographic rounding (one copy)
│   └── cif.py           # CIF resolution + reflection simulation
└── tools/               # one module per command

core/ exists because these helpers had drifted apart across the old repositories — two cryst_round implementations disagreed on refinement-limit annotations, and the reflection parser had a fix in one copy but not the other. Shared code lives in exactly one place now.

Credit

Written by Christian Nelle in the group of Prof. Sebastian Henke, Fakultät für Chemie und Chemische Biologie, Technische Universität Dortmund.

Released under the MIT licence — see LICENSE.

History

Consolidates five previously separate repositories: ACH-Pawley-Plotter, ACH-Run-Pawley-Wizard, ACH-PXRD-Quickplot, ACH-Pawley-Prefit, and ACH-TOPAS-Lattice-Parameter-Tables. Those remain available as an archive but receive no further updates. Variable-temperature IR tooling stays separate — it shares none of this code.