About this manual

This section provides a general description of the manual, the contents and the pre-requisites for the examples and instructions that are presented in the Getting Started guide.

The purpose of Getting Started is to present a quick and easy guide to the system for a user with limited or no experience of UNICORN. The work flow is presented in the form of practical instructions for how to operate a model system. These instructions form a basic framework that the reader can expand on by reading selected parts in the other manuals.

UNICORN software can be used in numerous possible system variations. For practical reasons the user documentation is based on a model system that consists of:

Note: If you use another system you may find that the descriptions and instructions do not match your system on every point. In that case you also need to refer to the user documentation for your specific chromatography system.

The examples and instructions that are presented in this manual are deliberately limited to a minimum to reduce the number of pages that you will need to read. In almost all cases you will find additional information about each topic in the User Reference Manual.

The manual is divided into chapters. Each chapter starts with a brief overview that presents the contents and the headings for the sections that the chapter contains. The section begins with an introduction that summarizes the content.

A section is divided into blocks of information with separating lines. The blocks are identified by labels in the margins. This makes it easier for you to quickly scan a page to find the exact topic you are looking for.

Menu commands, field names and other text items from the software are quoted exactly as they appear on the screen, in a bold typeface:

• Example: Run Setup

Search paths are shown in a bold typeface with a separating colon between each level:

• Example: View:Windows:Customise (i.e. the menu command Customise in the sub-menu Windows from the View-menu).

Text entries that UNICORN generates or that the user must type are represented by a monotype typeface:

• Example: Connection change

The following pre-requisites must be fulfilled before you can use this manual the way it was intended:

• You need to have a general understanding of how your PC and Windows works. In most cases universal computer functions will not be explained.

• UNICORN must be installed and configured correctly on your computer.

• You need to understand the concepts of liquid chromatography. Terminology and functionalities will be explained only when they differ from normal practise.

• Before you try to operate a chromatography system based on the instructions in this manual you need to study and understand the safety information that is part of the system documentation.