Getting started with plate maps

What are plate maps in Benchling?

Plate maps allow users to design and manage fixed plates with a new interactive interface for designing, creating, and visualizing assay plates in Benchling.
The plate map tool enables users to:

• Capture higher quality experimental data
• Plan plate-based experiments more efficiently
• Surface assay insights faster

The tool is most useful for an analytical workflow where:

• Users are designing only one or a few fixed plates (not matrix plates)
• Those fixed plates are not larger than 384 wells, or 24 columns and 16 rows 
• Users can perform transfers from a list of containers or entity sources to a plate

Overview of the plate map tools

Interactive well design and annotation

Add additional layers of metadata to wells in your plate, in a drag-to-select UI, including:

• Well roles with group numbers (replicates)
• Well-level schema field values

To learn more, see Annotating well roles and schema field values on plate maps.

Grid-based wizard for transferring entities into wells

Plate maps support the ability to fill wells with up to 10 entities; add sources from worklists, structured tables, or search; and apply patterns for adding sources.

To learn more, see Filling plates using plate maps.

Enter through Notebook or Inventory

Inserting plate maps in the Notebook allows you to maintain and visualize a record of data passed to a given plate. To learn more, see Creating and viewing plate records in Notebook.

1. Open a Notebook entry
2. Select "Insert" > "Plate map”
3. In the modal that launches, choose whether you want to either:
1. Create a new fixed plate entity
2. Update and add contents to an existing one

Users can navigate to the plate map tools via Inventory as well, where you can edit plate entities directly.

1. Create or open a fixed plate entity
2. On the top right of the Contents tab, find buttons labeled "Annotate plate" and "Fill wells," which will launch the plate map tool modal

1. 1. Use “Annotate plate” to add well roles or set schema field values
   2. Use “Fill wells” to add sources and define a transfer

More details

• Annotating well roles and schema field values on plate maps
• Filling plates using plate maps
• Creating and viewing plate records in Notebook