Viewmol 2.1
What is Viewmol?
Viewmol is a graphical front end for some quantum chemical as well as for some molecular modelling programs. It is able to visualize results of such calcula- tions. The program is able to show the geometry of a molecule, to trace a geo- metry optimization or a MD trajectory, to animate normal vibrations of a mole- cule or to show them as arrows, to draw IR, Raman, and inelastic neutron scat- tering spectra of a molecule, an MO energy level or density of states diagram, basis functions, molecular orbitals, and electron densities of a molecule and to show forces acting on each atom in a certain configuration. All drawings generated by Viewmol can be saved as TIFF, HPGL, or PostScript files. Anima- tions of normal modes can be converted to a video (MPEG) or animated GIF file, e. g. for inclusion into World Wide Web documents (requires additional pro- grams available on the Internet). The program can also be used as an interface to the freeware ray tracing program Rayshade. A file containing a description of the scene for this program may be generated and the ray tracing program can be used from within Viewmol.
At present Viewmol includes input filters for Discover, DMol/DSolid/DMol3, Gaussian 9x, Gulp, and Turbomole outputs as well as for PDB files. It is easy to write additional input filters for other output formats.
What is new in version 2.1 ?
- perspective drawing mode with shadows
- ability to move view point
- automatic determination of bond orders - output of resolution independent Postscript files even for drawings with shaded surfaces
- ability to read observed spectra and overlay them over the calculated ones
- ability to annotate the drawing in the main window - no hard wired limits on the number of bonds per atom anymore (metal organic complexes should now work) - speed up of drawing of isosurfaces
- ability to save a number of configurational settings directly from the program without need to edit X resources - improved input filter for Gaussian 9x and Turbomole - introduction of output filters to write structures in different formats
- Viewmol now runs more or less with Lesstif - a lot of bug fixes
What operating systems does Viewmol run on?
Viewmol was developed using Linux, but it was also ported (or better recompiled) on a number of other operating systems. Currently, pre- compiled binaries are available for Linux (dynamically linked with Lesstif, statically linked with Motif), AIX, and IRIX. The program should also run on OSF1 and HP-UX, but due to a lack of direct access to such hardware I couldn't test it.
Where do I get Viewmol?
Viewmol can be downloaded from the Computational Chemistry List archive (USA) at http://server.ccl.net/chemistry/resources/software/SOURCES/C/viewmol/
The source code and the precompiled binaries for Linux will also be available from Sunsite (USA) or your friendly neighbourhood mirror at file://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/graphics/visualization
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