In ORCA, security can be enabled to help prevent inexperienced or unauthorized personnel from making changes to the configuration of an experiment. In the preferences dialog, security passwords can be set or changed, and the security can be enabled or disabled. A password is required to disable system-wide security. It is useful to disable security during development of a configuration to minimize the hassles of dealing with locking and unlocking dialogs.

In the lower left corner of most dialogs you will find a lock that is determines the security state of that dialog. If it is grayed out then system-wide security is NOT enabled and you can do whatever you want. It is not grayed out and it is locked, you must click it to gain access to any disabled features on that dialog that are linked to the security system.

In some dialogs, features are locked out while a run is in progress and unlocking the lock will have not allow you access. Other features are tied not only to whether or not a run is in progress, but also to the type of run--usually a maintenance run type.