MC GratingPython interface
Since 2021 the Modal Crossed code can be driven from Python. It is documented on its own site, outside the in-application help.
What exists
The 2021-05-10 release introduced it, in these words: The Python interface is implemented. Only Modal Crossed version is supported at the moment. More details here: mc-grating-python.readthedocs.io. Credits to Dorian Herle.
That external site is the reference documentation: installation, the objects that describe a crossed-grating structure, and how a calculation is launched and its results read back.
The interface exists for the Modal Crossed code; the other five codes are operated through their Windows interface or the command line, and their results are read from the text tables or, since 2021, from the JSON files the codes write.
Why it matters
Everything the interface computes is what Modal Crossed computes: the same FMM with the automatically generated normal-vector field, the same materials catalogue, the same license. What Python adds is the loop around it — a parameter study, an optimisation with a criterion the built-in optimizer does not offer, or a batch of structures generated from another program — and a place for the results other than a text window.
Status
The interface is not described in the in-application help, which was last revised in 2018, and it is not part of the installer: follow the external documentation for how to obtain it. The changelog is the record of what changed on the MC Grating side; write to mc@mcgrating.com if you want to use it with a licensed copy.