Suggestion for mcxlab README update

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Connor Henley

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Oct 15, 2025, 8:11:37 AMOct 15
to mcx-users
Hello,

First time MCX user, excited to get started.  However, I've spent at least 4 hours over the last two days trying to get mcxlab to run.  Ultimately, the issue was that I needed to run the nightlybuild installer:


...to get mcx installed on my computer and set up all matlab path variables...BEFORE mcxlab would run.  That is--MCXLAB won't run unless you already have MCX installed. 

This is probably obvious to anyone who's used mcx before, but since I hadn't, I was just trying to follow what was on the mcxlab README document.  And it does not say that you need to do this anywhere in the README.  If you could add a sentence or two describing this in the README, it might save future users a lot of time!

Also, this might be useful for others: because I hadn't installed MCX first, when I tried to do the  `mcxlab('gpuinfo')` that was suggested in the README, I would always get a message that said something like "Unrecognized function or variable 'mex'".

All the best,

-Connor

Qianqian Fang

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Oct 15, 2025, 8:22:31 AMOct 15
to mcx-...@googlegroups.com, Connor Henley

this is not true.

you don't need to install mcx first before you can run mcxlab.

mcxlab's mcx.mex* files are completely independent of mcx's binary. mcxlab can run simulations just by itself. Only when you are trying to run some built in examples (mcxlab/examples), some of the scripts requires matlab utility functions (mcxplotvol, mcxdetweight etc), historically provided as part of the mcx package (mcx/utils), however, in this release, all utility functions are also duplicated in the mcxlab packages, under mcxlab/matlab. You just need to add path to the mcxlab folder and mcxlab/matlab folder, you should be good to go (only mcxpreview.m utility function has a dependency to iso2mesh)

in short, the mcxlab package is designed to run by itself. of course, for first time windows users, using the installer is highly recommended as it does everything for you automatically (including addpath matlab paths).

if you can clearly describe how you initially installed mcxlab that gave you the "Unrecognized function or variable 'mex'", I can take a look and see if I can explain what had happened.

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Connor Henley

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Oct 22, 2025, 4:19:37 PM (7 days ago) Oct 22
to mcx-users
Okay, this is good to know, thank you.  Unfortunately I don't think I'll be able to replicate the exact path I attempted when I was trying to get mcxlab working on this computer, but I will likely have to install mcxlab on other machines.  If I run into similar issues then, I can report them here.
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