Filling plates using plate maps

In order to fill fixed plates with contents, you'll need to launch the plate map tool from Notebook or Inventory. See Getting started with plate maps and Creating and viewing plate records in Notebook.

Adding contents to wells from source containers or entities

When you select the Contents layer, you are able to select wells to which you’d like to add sources.

1. In the plate map tool, navigate to the "Contents" layer on the left sidebar
1. "Role" is a new system field that can be edited on all wells in fixed plates.
2. Select any wells and use the search bar to find sources — containable entities and containers — to transfer.
1. Typing to search
2. Adding from a worklist
3. Adding from a structured table (only if you have launched the plate map tool from a Notebook entry)
3. Once you’ve added sources to the gray box on the right, select the manner in which you’d like to add those sources to the well(s):
1. Add all sources to each well
1. This option adds every listed source (in the highlighted box) to every selected well.
2. 
2. Add one source to each well by pattern
1. This option allows you to add a single source to each well, either by defining a pattern or using the groupings in the well role layer, as shown below. Using the groups defined for a well role is only available when you select wells that all have the same primary role.
2. 
4. Click “Add sources” to add contents to wells.

Note that the plate map tool currently allows you to transfer up to 10 contents per well, and it currently does not support transferring contents with solid units from sources or into wells.

Once sources are added to wells, Benchling will help you visualize the contents you're adding to wells, where contents in the legend are grouped by schema. Hovering over individual wells allows you to see the specific contents in each.

Clearing wells

In the contents layer, the clear wells button allows you to remove all sources that have been added to the well or individual sources that may have been added to a well in error. Note that the options in the dropdown reflect groups of sources, identified by entity schema(s).

Note that you can only clear wells of the contents you had just added within the same wizard. Previously added contents will have to be removed via the “remove contents” button on the plate entity in Inventory.

Defining the transfer

Once you’ve designated well roles and added sources, you have the option to enter information about the transfer of each source. Defining the transfer is an optional step that allows you to capture more information about your experiment; for example, you can track how much volume is decanted from source containers. You can fill out as much or as little information here as needed.

In this part of the tool, you can include the following information:

• Source concentration
• Transfer quantity
• Final concentration
• Total well volume

Source concentration and transfer quantity are properties of the transfer, whereas final concentration and total well volume will set values on the wells of the plate you create.

To set values, edit the transfer table to the right of the plate map. There are two views for this transfer table:

• Summary — This view allows you to set volumes and concentrations in bulk across all wells in the plate, grouping sources by unique combinations of entity schemas.
• Well — This view allows you to set volumes and concentrations for individual wells that you have selected in your plate map. You must select at least one well to see and set the values in wells.

You can toggle between the two views. If a value is set on the summary view, it overwrites all values on all relevant wells. If different values are set on wells that are grouped together in the summary view, the summary view will communicate that “multiple values” are set on wells.
Benchling will prevent you from making some common mistakes or taking invalid Inventory actions. For example:

• In each well, the sum of transfer volumes for each source must not exceed the total well volume.
• Across all wells, the transfer volume of a source cannot exceed the volume in a source container.
• For each content, its final concentration cannot be greater than its source concentration.

Resolve all errors to finalize the transfer.

Finalizing a transfer and viewing metadata on the plate

After you click “Fill,” Benchling passes metadata to the plate and performs a transfer. The plate entity now contains the contents you filled it with.

If you open the plate entity, the plate map allows you to visualize the contents by schema, and the table includes the contents, their concentrations, and the volume in each well. Well roles and schema field values can also be visualized in both the plate map and the table. You can toggle between the different layers using the dropdown above the plate map.