Well Plates
A plate is not really a sample, it's a layout. Which wells hold what, at what concentration, and what the reader said about each one. So creating a Well plate sample opens a workspace built around the well map rather than the usual sample profile.
It carries you through four steps: lay the plate out, prep it, optionally pull material in from another plate, then read the results back in.
Creating a Plate
New sample, then Well plate, asks for a name, a scope, and a size. The formats are 6, 12, 24, 48, 96, and 384 wells, each showing its grid so you can see what you're picking.
If your project already has plate templates of that size, they're offered here too, so a standard layout can be in place before the plate exists. Press Create plate and you land in the workspace.
The size can't be changed afterwards, so this is the one decision worth pausing on.
The Workflow
The sidebar lists four steps, and Conspecta ticks them off from the plate's own data rather than asking you to mark them done. They're not a wizard: click any step at any time, in any order.
| Step | What it's for |
|---|---|
| Design | Lay out roles. Paint samples, standards, blanks, controls. |
| Prep | Set concentrations and run dilution series. |
| Transfer | Pull wells from a parent plate into this one. Optional. |
| Results | Review readouts and standard curve. |
Whichever step you're on also recolours the map: roles during Design, concentration during Prep, and a heatmap of readings during Results.
Selecting Wells
Everything in the workspace acts on the wells you have selected, so selection comes first. Click a well, drag across a range, or click a row or column label to take the whole line. Hold Cmd/Ctrl to toggle individual wells, and Shift to extend a rectangle. On a phone, tap and swipe do the same. Clicking the background clears the selection.
Tip: The tools only appear once something is selected. If the step's panel looks empty, you've probably deselected rather than lost the controls.
The selection is described back to you as you go, as "Column 8 · 8 wells", "Row A · 12 wells", or a list of the wells themselves when there are only a few.
Design
Paint the selected wells with a role: Sample, Standard, Blank, or Control. Clear role empties them again. Controls can be narrowed further to Positive, Negative, Max, or Min, and a positive or negative control can carry a dose index when you're running a series.
Link sample attaches a real sample from your project to every selected well, so the plate stops being a grid of labels and starts pointing at actual material. The well then shows that sample's name, and the sample's own Connections show the plate.
Replicates are numbered for you. Wells that share a role and a sample become a replicate group automatically, numbered across the plate in reading order. Nothing to name, nothing to maintain, and a well whose partner disappears quietly leaves the group.
A collision warning means the same sample is in wells that aren't replicates. Usually that's the same sample painted under two different roles. The notice names the wells and suggests giving them a matching role so they group properly. It reappears if the collision changes, so dismissing it isn't a way to bury it.
Prep
With wells selected, set a concentration and unit (mM, µM, nM, ng/mL, µg/mL, mg/mL, %, or X), and a volume if you're tracking one.
Serial dilution is the reason this step exists. Select a row, set the starting concentration, give a fold factor, and Conspecta walks the series across the wells in order, each one the previous divided by the factor. It appears once you have more than one well selected.
A dilution calculator sits below, collapsed until you want it. Give it a stock concentration, a target, and a final volume and it tells you how much stock and how much diluent to combine. It's a scratch pad: it never writes to the plate, so you can work out a number without disturbing the layout.
Transfer
Transfer from pulls material from another plate of the same size into this one, either well-for-well or from one named position to another. You can apply a dilution factor as it comes across, and set how much to take.
Leave the amount blank and the whole well moves. Give an amount and the source is drained by exactly that much, so the plate you took from stays honest about what's left in it. Where both plates track volume in compatible units, pooling into an already-full well is mass-balanced rather than overwritten.
This is the step that records provenance between plates: the plate you transferred from becomes this plate's parent, and it's named in the finished summary.
Results
Drop the plate reader's file onto the Results step. It takes .xlsx, .xls, and .csv, and it tolerates the header rows instruments like to write above the grid, finding the block that starts with row labels A, B, C.
Before anything is applied you're told how many wells will be updated and from which file, along with a count of any non-numeric cells it's skipping. Apply results commits it. If nothing parsed, it says so and points at the row labels as the usual cause.
When at least two standards have both a concentration and a reading, a Standard curve marker appears, since at that point the plate can actually produce one.
Applying results completes the plate and locks it. The layout becomes read-only so a plate that has been read can't drift out of step with its own numbers. There's no confirmation step before this, so import when you're ready. Edit plate unlocks it again.
A completed plate swaps its workflow sidebar for a summary: who completed it and when, how many wells carry results, the breakdown by role, whether there's a standard curve, the samples used, and the parent plate it was transferred from.
Templates
Any layout can become a template, which is what makes the second plate of an assay quick. The Template menu offers Apply template, Save as new template, and Update template.
A template captures the wells that have something in them: their positions, their role grouping, and their concentrations and volumes. It deliberately doesn't capture the samples, the results, or the replicate groups, since those belong to one particular plate.
Applying a template to a plate that already has wells filled in asks twice, and says plainly that it will overwrite roles at the template's positions. Templates are matched to plate size, so only same-format layouts are offered.
An applied template comes back as all Sample wells. Positions, concentrations, and volumes are restored, but standards, blanks, and controls return as ordinary samples and need repainting. Worth knowing before you build a workflow around an eight-standard layout.
Every layout the project has saved is listed in one place. Templates, first in the Samples workspace header, opens Plate templates: every saved layout at every plate size, searchable by name and description. Each row draws the layout in miniature beside its format and how many wells it has configured, so you can tell two similar maps apart from the list.
The pencil on a row renames the template and edits its description, and the trash deletes it once you answer the Delete? prompt. Done closes the list. Applying a layout happens on the plate itself, from the Template menu or as you create the plate, where the layouts offered match that plate's size. The button appears for members who can edit the project, since renaming and deleting change what everyone else works from.
Exporting
A completed plate has Export Excel, which writes a workbook with the plate's details and a row per filled well: position, row, column, status, sample ID and name, result value, and notes. Roles, concentrations, and volumes stay in the app rather than travelling with that export, so use it for the readings and the sample mapping.
Everything saves as you work, and the header shows when it last did.