Diamond Version 3: More features and enhancements
Diamond 3 Features Overview...
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Picture Creation Assistant
This assistant has been introduced especially for a user who is not so familiar
with Diamond and may be overwhelmed by the lot of functions to manually build
up a structure picture or to assign individual styles for atoms, bonds, cell
edges, polyhedra, etc.
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Auto-Builder
Unlike the Picture Creation Assistant, the Auto-Builder creates a structure
picture automatically or by a user-defined strategy ("scheme"). It is like a
set of commands or a script that - applied to similar structures - leads to
similar structure pictures. This is useful when you frequently change the
structural parameters or when you browse through a set of (similar) data sets.
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"Crystal" and "molecular" structures
Although Diamond 2 can read an input file with "free"
xyz-coordinates and without cell and symmetry, it converted that into a
pseudo-crystal structure with cell axes depending on the x,y,z-extension of the
moiety and space-group P1 after import.
Diamond 3 can really work with structures having no translational symmetry,
so-called "molecular" structures. "Crystal" and "molecular" structures can be
converted into each other by adding or removing cell and space-group
information.
The set of supported file formats have been extended for molecular file formats
such as Cerius2 CSSR, MDL MOL and SYBYL MOL and MOL2 format.
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Composition of structure pictures from different sources
You can copy a fragment of a structure picture (or the whole) and paste this
fragment into a blank or other existing picture of the same data set. But
even more, you can also paste this fragment into another data set. (Note:
The composed picture then loses cell and symmetry information.) The fragment
may be rotated or shifted in its target picture, e.g. to simulate the
docking of a molecule on a surface.
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Layout mode
Diamond 2 offers a special "Page view" mode, enabling you a preview how the
structure picture looks on a, say, A4 page rather than in a window on the
screen. Diamond 3 improves this mode: You may vary a zoom factor ("xx%", "fit
to page"). Scroll bars will appear when the depicted drawing area does not
fit into the window. And there is a second layout mode for bitmaps. You
define a width and height of the drawing area in pixels and a resolution in
dots per inch (dpi).
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Several more graphics enhancements (optionally)
"Stairs" on line edges can now be smoothed with "anti-aliasing". Motion of
pictures can become quicker using reduced graphics resolution.
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Walking through the structure
The current Diamond version stops the camera when it comes "too" close to the
picture. With Diamond version 3, you will be able to walk through the picture.
Use the "Camera distance" mode to go deeper or to evade, use the "Rotate
along x,y,z-axis" modes to vary the direction.
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Animation sequences
A kind of recorder allows to store a series of screenshots where you can create
an animation file (e.g. an AVI file) from. Alternatively you can create the
frames by keystrokes.
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Accelerated motion
The new "Spin" function - when activated - accelerates motion (when tracking
with mouse or stepping with keystrokes). This is the general
implementation of the already existing "Rock and Roll" function, available
in Diamond since the first version.
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Printing multiple pictures on one printout page
A printer assistant helps you to print all or selected pictures of a
data set or a Diamond document on one page.
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Export of data and graphics as HTML and PNG
Data sheet (comprehensive formatting of structure data), the new data brief
(compact and configurable) as well as tables can be exported in HTML format.
Structure picture graphics can be exported in "Portable Network Graphics" (PNG)
format. This helps you to create web pages with your structure data and
pictures.
Finally, not to forget all the minor improvements...
Diamond 3 Features Overview...
Previous: Geometry enhancements: Planes, lines and
more...
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