Define the plate size

Define the plate size for your assay template to establish how many rows and columns the plate uses.

Before you begin

You have set up and assigned the preparation schemes.

About this task

To define plate sizes in PLA 3.0, you use position factors. They let you define the number of rows and columns on a plate and, if needed, also the number of plates. Quantitative response assay documents created from scratch do not contain position factors.

This use case uses one plate only. You therefore define row and column position factors only. For details on position factors, see the Position factors topic.

Procedure

To define the plate size:
  1. In the Content editor, go to Setup > Observation data.
  2. In the Creatable elements pane, double-click Column: Position.
    Result: Your assay document now has one position factor.
  3. To add the second factor, right-click the Column: Position element, and then select Duplicate element.
    Result: Your assay document now has two position factors.
  4. Configure the rows of your plate.
    1. Rename the first position factor to Row.
      This is the column name shown in the Observations editor.
    2. Use the Number of positions setting to set the number of rows to 8.
    3. By default, PLA 3.0 uses numbers for the rows in the By Position editor. To switch to alphabetical row labels ('A' to 'H'), select 'true' from the Map index to characters drop-down list.
  5. Configure the columns of your plate.
    1. Rename the second position factor to Column.
      This is the column name shown in the Observations editor.
    2. Use the Number of positions setting to set the number of columns to 12.
    Result: Your Observation data node should now look like this:
    Figure 1. Row and column position factors of a 96-well plate, displayed in the Observation data element of the Content editor
  6. Save the template.

What to do next

Define the analytical settings.