A molecular editor program.

Abstract

A program called MOLEDITOR has been developed for manipulating images of molecules and various geometric objects in real time and in three dimensions using Evans and Sutherland PS300 graphics displays and Digital VAX computers. In addition to the normal viewing operations of rotation, translation, clipping and scaling, the program allows molecules and objects to be placed in local frames for motion relative to other molecules or objects and allows several modes of motion about individual bonds. MOLEDITOR also allows the display and manipulation of molecules and objects within crystal lattices and of the lattices themselves via manipulation of the unit cell parameters. The program also supports display and manipulation of animated frames from dynamics simulations. It is also possible to dynamically monitor coordinates of and distances between items. An easy-to-use scripting capability allows the user to generate sequences of motion that can be recorded directly from the display.