CrystalMaker Online Help

CrystalMaker Guide: Plot Range

Changing the Crystal Plot Range

For a given crystal structure you can plot up to 9000 atoms, arranged in three dimensions. You're not limited to displaying integral numbers of unit cells: you can use the Set Range command (Transform > Set Range) to specify a precise range, in fractional coordinates, for the x, y, and z crystallographic axes.

For example, you might have a structure which has important molecular groups at the edges of the unit cell. Plotting just one unit cell would truncate these groups, however, plotting many complete unit cells would result in a complex plot with far too many atoms. A solution would be to start with one unit cell, then increase the plot range along x, y, and z, until all the important atoms were in range, e.g., -0.5 to +1.5 for x, y, and z axis ranges.

Tweaking the display

You can use CrystalMaker's selection tools to display a portion of the currently-displayed structure. You can use the Arrow Tool to select individual atoms (shift-click to select groups of atoms), or the Lasso, Rectangle, or Polygon Tools to select a contiguous chunk of the structure.

With atoms selected, you can choose the following options:-

Hide selected atoms
Hide other (non-selected) atoms
Delete selection (molecules only)
Delete others (molecules only)

These options are available from the Edit menu, or from a MacOS8-style popup menu in the graphics window (hold down the control key, then click in the graphics window).

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