Brain Imaging & Analysis Center

The recommended way to start CIGAL is to double click a “StartCIGAL” shortcut in the folder where you have your CIGAL files. If you do not have the shortcut there, copy the “StartCIGAL” shortcut from the main CIGAL program folder to your folder (be sure to copy, not move, the shortcut). Double clicking the shortcut starts CIGAL with your current folder as CIGAL's “working directory”. This makes it easy for the program to find your input files, and ensures that all output files will be saved in your current folder.

If you prefer, you can start CIGAL by running the CIGAL.exe program itself, or using a StartCIGAL shortcut in any other folder, and then use the “chdir” command to change the working directory to the folder where you want to run. If you use that method, however, you should be aware that when it starts up CIGAL will run whatever “start.imp” file exists in the folder where you started CIGAL, and if you have a “start.imp” file in your own folder CIGAL will not know to run it. You would have to enter the “start” command manually after you “chdir” to your folder. Much simpler to just put another copy of StartCIGAL wherever you actually want to run.

Note: Copying shortcuts around is admittedly a slightly unorthodox way of launching Windows software. Most programs are started by double clicking a file that has a name suffix that automatically starts the application (e.g. a '.doc' file automatically starts Word). All CIGAL input files are either simple text files or standard image, sound, or movie files, however, so it doesn't make sense to assign any of those suffixes to launch CIGAL. Those files all need to be openable by other programs. We used to assign a dummy suffix (e.g. “.cgl”) to launch CIGAL, and then put an empty “start.cgl” file in any folder where you want to run CIGAL. That method caused problems on some Windows operating systems, however, requiring extra installation steps by a local system administrator. It also does not allow different versions of CIGAL to co-exist on the same system. Although having different CIGAL versions is not recommended it has sometimes been convenient.

Putting a StartCIGAL shortcut file into your data directory is just as easy as putting a dummy start.cgl file there and has the same effect (provided the “Start In” entry in the shortcut's properties is blank). Creating and copying shortcuts allows any number of versions to coexist (again, not recommended) and does not require any administrator priveleges. Despite not being the standard Windows way of doing things, therefore, this has proven to be the simplest way run (and the only that has worked first time on every Windows computer tested).

For a description of the steps CIGAL goes through on start-up, see:

• CIGAL Start-Up

See Also:

ShowPlay Home, ShowPlay Manual, Running ShowPlay, CIGAL Home, CIGAL Manual, Manual Help