When Plaque Simulator (PS) is launched it searches for a master Data folder. It then either loads or creates menu selectable links to recognizable files such as physics data, SQL databases and plaques that it finds in the data folder (and within other folders in the data folder except those whose names are enclosed in parenthesis, such as (User Guide) ).

A data folder must exist and is expected to be located in the same folder as the Plaque Simulator application itself. The default name for this folder is Plaque Simulator Data. Eye Physics recommends that you keep this default name and location. If no specific location preference is selected here, the default locations are used. If necessary, however, you can copy the supplied default data folder onto a server and then Select the server based version rather than the local version. Please refer to the Data Folder topic in the user guide for more detail.

Eye Physics further recommends that you organize all of your treatment plans in a Patients folder located in the MacOSX user's home directory Documents folder or optionally on an encrypted external volume (e.g. Patients HD), and that you further organize all current and recent patients in a Current Patients folder located within your Patients folder. This provides additional security since only the admin or PS user will have access to that directory. The default name for the Patients folder is Plaque Simulator Patients. If necessary, you can choose some other folder to be your Patients folder.

For each new patient, create a new folder named for that patient (e.g. Doe, John) in your current patients folder (e.g. Patients HD/Plaque Simulator Patients/Current Patients/Doe, John/) and then organize all images and plans associated with that patient in that folder.

If you are having problems saving files such as treatment plans and/or dcmtk conversions it may be due to the state of POSIX file permissions for some of these folders. POSIX stands for Portable Operating System Interface for UniX, and is an IEEE standard designed to facilitate application portability. The buttons near the right side of this window allow you to view the current POSIX permissions and change the permissions of the associated folders. You must unlock physics to enable these buttons. For best compatibility, the POSIX file permissions for directories (folders) where PS saves files should be drwxrwxrwx which enables read, write and execute for all users. Clicking the permissions buttons cycles the folder's POSIX permissions between some standard configurations. Use the MacOS Finder Go to Folder and Get Info windows to create more customizable settings and to propagate those settings to enclosed folders.