Analyzing With TPOINT™

If you happen to own Software Bisque's implementation of Patrick Wallace's TPOINT Telescope Analysis Software, you can use TPOINT to analyze the pointing models generated by ACP's automatic pointing corrector. This allows you to learn about your telescope's pointing and evaluate the quality of the model. On ACP's Telescope menu, there is an option to save the current (active) model in a backup file. With this option, you can make a copy of the active model and analyze it with TPOINT.

As described on the Using ACP's Pointing Corrector page, ACP saves its model mapping points in a file that is compatible with Diffraction Limited's MaxPoint Pointing Corrector. These model files must be converted into a format that can be imported into TPOINT. ACP comes with a standard script ModelToTpoint.vbs that converts ACP model files into TPOINT-importable text format. Once converted, the resulting text file is imported into TPOINT for analysis.

Analysis Procedure

1. Unless you already have a saved ACP model, on ACP's Telescope menu, select Save model as... to make a copy of the active model into a separate file, for example MyModel.clb.
2. Load the ModelToTpoint.vbs standard script into ACP's console. The telescope, camera, etc. do not need to be connected.
3. Click Run to start the script.
   1. You will first see a file-open box. Select the model you want to analyze (MyModel.clb) and click OK.
   2. Next you will see a file-save box. Specify the TPOINT-text file into which you want to save the converted model (MyModel.dat) and click OK.
   3. When the script completes, you can close ACP.
4. Start TPOINT and select New in its File menu. This creates a new (empty) TPOINT model.
5. Select Import Text in the TPOINT file menu. Choose the converted model from above (MyModel.dat). As soon as you click OK in the file-open box, the model data should appear in TPOINT.
6. Select Save as... in the TPOINT File menu and specify the name of the TPOINT model file (MyModel.tpt).
7. Now you're ready to analyze with TPOINT. Depending on how familiar and/or advanced you are with TPOINT, the best place to start is with the "fit data" feature:
   1. In the Model menu, select Fit Data
   2. Critical: Start with all of the checkboxes in the Terms area turned on. These terms correspond directly with ACP's corrector terms (which ACP uses at all times). You should see "8 terms in use" next to the "More Terms" button. If more than 8 are in use, go into the More Terms window and turn them off.
   3. Select Scatter Diagram in the Graph area.