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Diamond Version 3: More features and enhancements

Diamond 3 Features Overview...
Previous: Geometry enhancements: Planes, lines and more...

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • "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.
  • 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.
  • 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).
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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...