\chapter{Special-purpose components}
\index{Library!Components!misc}

The chapter deals with components that are not easily included
in any of the other chapters because of their special nature,
but which are still part of the \MCX\ system.

One part of these components deals with splitting simulations
into two (or more) stages. 
For example, the front end of a beamline is often not changed much, and a long simulation of photon rays
``surviving'' through initial optics could be reused
for several simulations of the beamline back-end, speeding up
the simulations by (typically) one or two orders of magnitude.
The components for doing this trick is \textbf{Virtual\_input} and
\textbf{Virtual\_output}, which stores and reads photon rays, respectively.

For integration with SHADOW~\cite{sanchez2011shadow3} the components \textbf{Shadow\_inpt} and \textbf{Shadow\_output}
have been written.

\textbf{Progress\_bar} is a simulation utility that displays the simulation
status, but assumes the form of a component.

\newpage

\input{misc/Progress_bar}

\input{misc/Virtual_output}

\input{misc/Virtual_input}
\input{misc/Shadow_input}
\input{misc/Shadow_output}

