PoPy Terminal

For simplicity, PoPy is a text-based command line tool that runs in an operating system terminal.

This terminal requires a set of environment variables to be defined that PoPy depends upon to work correctly. There are three easy ways to set up the PoPy environment:

  • Run <PoPy installation folder>/popy_cmd.exe via Windows Explorer. This will open a PoPy command prompt in the installation folder.

  • Left mouse click on the ‘PoPy Command Prompt’ shortcut on your Desktop in the in the PoPy folder of the Windows Start menu. (This calls popy_cmd.exe for the most recent PoPy installation.)

  • Open a terminal (i.e. a command prompt or Windows Powershell) in any folder and type popy to set up the environment. This requires PoPy to be in the user’s PATH environment variable already. If it is not, first run popy_cmd.exe from the installation path instead.

Note

If there are multiple PoPy installations, we recommend that you run popy_cmd.exe from the desired installation folder to ensure that the correct version of PoPy is run. In any case, you should check that your PoPy environment is for the correct version by running popy info before proceeding.

Note

There should be no significant difference between running PoPy in a Command Prompt versus running it in a Powershell. We have, however, seen examples where running in a Command Prompt took significantly longer than in a Powershell for reasons we have not yet established.

In the terminal, you should see something like:

Setting up PoPy session for first use.
This may take a minute or so.
PoPy v1.3.1
(c)2026 Wright Dose Limited, UK.

Usage: popy <command> <arguments>

where command is:
    
    activate     Activate licence for PoPy
    deactivate   Deactivate licence for PoPy
    validate     Run validation test to ensure PoPy installed successfully

    version      Display the PoPy version number
    info         Display detailed information on the PoPy installation

    create       Create a new script for a given action (e.g., fit, gen)
    run          Run a script
    check        Check a script (without running)
    format       Reformat an existing script to match latest specifications
    
    doc          Open HTML documentation in web browser
    view         Open html output in default browser

Call 

    popy <cmd> --help 

for help on using a specific PoPy tool.

in pale blue text on a black background.

This summary of the various PoPy commands indicates that PoPy is ready for use.