9.4.2 Defining and Displaying a Slice

Hit Calculate in the top-level menu and choose Packing/Slicing... to obtain the Packing and Slicing dialogue box.

Set packing ranges (see Section 9.3.1).

Specify the plane of interest. This can be done by:

Selecting a plane you have previously created; a list is obtainable by clicking on the down-arrow next to the box labelled Plane:

Creating a new least-squares plane (see Section 7.2) or Miller plane (see Section 7.3) by using the dialogue box obtained by hitting the New... button.

Switch on the Show slice, Show plane and Show bounds tick boxes

All molecules whose centroids lie in the specified packing ranges and between the grey boundary planes will now be displayed, e.g.

To change the separation of the boundary planes, input a new number into the box labelled Maximum distance +/- . For example, if the value you enter is 2.0, then only molecules whose centroids lie within 2.0Å of the reference plane, in either direction, will be shown. If you enter the number by typing directly into the box, rather than by using the arrows, you will need to hit the Enter key on your keyboard for the new setting to take effect.

To displace the slice, input a new number into the Displacement box. For example, if you have set Maximum distance +/- to 2.0 and Displacement to 1.0, then only those molecules whose centroids lie within -1.0 and +3.0Å of the reference plane will be displayed.

The Maximum distance +/- and Displacement values can be reset to their defaults of 5.0Å and 0.0Å by using the Reset button.