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XCrySDen --
(X-Window)
                          CRYstalline Structures and DENsities

[Figure]
Short Introduction to XCrySDen

Table of Contents

1 Basic information and hints
   1.1 What XCrySDen can do?
   1.2 XCrySDen's Main Window
   1.3 Useful hints
        1.3.1 Mouse events for display window
        1.3.2 Lighting
        1.3.3 Hint #1
        1.3.4 Hint #2

2 Running XCrySDen for the first time
   2.1 Running XCrySDen examples
   2.2 Loading a Structure from File
        2.2.1 Supported File Formats
   2.3 Measuring Distances, Angles, ...
   2.4 XCrySDen Menus: short description

1 Basic information and hints

1.1 What XCrySDen can do?

In short: XCrySDen is a crystalline and molecular structure render program, with additional capabilities of rendering contours, isosurfaces, Wigner-Seitz cells (also Brillouin zone), Fermi surfaces and so on. Some of its features are the following:
  • widget with periodic table of elements:
    Periodic Table of Elements
  • displaying molecular and crystalline structure in several different display modes:
    WireFrame Stick Pipe&Ball BallStick SpaceFill Molecular Surface
  • displaying crystal and Wigner-Seitz cells:
    ZnS crystal with Wigner-Seitz cell
  • displaying smaller or bigger portion of crystal (multiplying the unit cells)
  • visualizing the forces as vectors:
    Forces
  • animations
    Forces
  • displaying contours and colorplanes
  • displaying isosurfaces:
    Isosurface
  • reciprocal-space analysis:
      + selecting a k-path inside the Brillouin-zone
      + visualizing Fermi surfaces
    k-path    fermi
                                                        surface
  • and more ...

1.2 XCrySDen's Main Window

This is the XCrySDen main window:
XCrySDen Main Window
So what do we see:
Top:
A menu widget is at the top of the main window. Please notice the Palette menu (small palette-like icon) at the left of File menu. A background of the render window can be set here to an arbitrary color.
Middle:
A big display area, where a portion of the GaAs surface with adsorbed hydrogen is displayed, is a render window. Its background color can be set via Palette menu (small palette-like icon) at the left of File menu.
Left:
A toolbox panel is on the left side of the main window. Please note a slider at its left. With it we can drag the panel up and down, in order to reach all tools-widgets on the panel.
Bottom:
A measure buttons (AtomInfo, Distance, Angle, Dihedral) are at the bottom of the main window. Here you can found how to measure distances, angles and dihedrals. At a very right is the Exit button.
Here you can found detailed description of the XCrySDen main window. It was written for an old XCrySDen's version 0.3. The main window of the current version differs a bit, but nevertheless the document is still useful.

1.3 Useful hints

1.3.1 Mouse events for display window

  • Rotation: press-and-hold left mouse button and move the pointer
  • Translation: press-and-hold middle mouse button (or both buttons for two-button mouse) and move the pointer
  • Zoom (+): press-and-hold Shift + Left mouse button and move the pointer up
  • Zoom (-): press-and-hold Shift + Left mouse button and move the pointer down
  • Fullscreen mode: double-click the left mouse button. To exit from the fullscreen mode perform another double click with the left mouse button.
  • Pop-up menu: press-and-hold the right mouse button

1.3.2 Lighting

XCrySDen has two levels of display modes, these are so-called:
  • Lighting-On mode yields fancy graphics with shades. Example:
    Urea Molecule (Lighting-On)
  • Lighting-Off mode is very simple and fast, but without shades. Example:
    Urea Molecule (Lighting-Off)
    WARNING: Lighting-Off mode can display only structure, crystal cages and nothing else !!!

    NOTE: I got several dozens Emails per year claiming: not able to render isosurface. And the reason is always the Lighting-Off mode.

1.3.3 Hint #1

When rendering an isosurface or some other complex object (i.e. isosurface) switch to Lighting-On mode, otherwise it will not appear !!!

1.3.4 Hint #2

If your graphics card isn't fast, then the rotation will be quite slow when rendering in Lighting-On mode a very complex object (hundreds of atoms, isosurfaces, etc.). In such a case, simply switch to Lighting-Off mode (this will turn off the complexity) and rotate, translate, zoom and so on until you are satisfied with the setting. Then switch back to Lighting-On mode (this will turn on the isosurface) and you will have the desired picture !!!

2 Running XCrySDen for the first time

After the installation of the XCrySDen program (the Installation instructions can be found here) we are ready to run XCrySDen for the first time. The name of XCrySDen executable is xcrysden. I suggest that you start exploring the program capabilities by running the provided examples as explained below.

2.1 Running XCrySDen examples

XCrySDen distribution provides several example files. They can be loaded via File-->XCrySDen Examples ... cascade menu. There one can choose among different provided files in several supported formats. After loading the structure, start to explore the functionality of the toolbox panel buttons. The panel is located on the left side of the main window. Try also to measure some distances or angles by clicking the corresponding measure buttons located at the bottom of the main window (the HOWTO Measure instructions can be found here).

2.2 Loading a Structure from File

There are two ways to load the structure into XCrySDen: (i) trough File-->Open * menus (where "*" is a wildcard standing for any text), or (ii) via command line options. Execute: xcrysden --help to display all supported options. XCrySDen supports well-known XYZ and PDB file formats. In the latter case only a subset of the file is read, namely the ATOMS section, while all others are ignored. But these file formats do not have support for crystal structures. Therefore XCrySDen has its own file format, which is called XCrySDen Structure File (XSF) format. Many other formats (like WIEN2k struct file or PWscf input file) are supported through conversion to the XSF format. Here you can find the XSF format specification.

2.2.1 Supported File Formats

The following file formats are supported in XCrySDen:
Molecular structure formats:
  • XYZ
  • PDB
  • GAUSSIAN Z-Matrix file (requires BABEL program)
  • GAUSSIAN output file

Crystal structure formats:
  • XSF (XCrySDen Structure File)
  • CRYSTAL files:
      + input file
      + unit 9 (i.e. properties file)
  • WIEN2k struct file
  • PWscf files:
      + input file
      + output file (structural optimization run only)
  • FHI98MD files:
      + inp.ini file
      + coord.out file
In addition, Jens Kunstmann has written an XSF-converting tool xsfConvert. Currently it can convert the data from the TB-LMTO-ASA and VASP programs to the XSF format.

2.3 Measuring Distances, Angles, ...

The measurement of angles, distances and dihedrals can be easily achieved by pressing corresponding measure button. These buttons are located at the bottom of XCrySDen main window. After pressing one of these buttons, the measure toplevel window will pop up. Please note that while in measure mode most of the functionality of XCrySDen is frozen (for example: the display-mode cannot be changed). But we can rotate the displayed structure, and this feature is quite useful for complex structures. If we want to measure the distance between two atoms, then after pressing the Distance button, simply click on two atoms. If some atom is selected then it is changed to light green color and its coordinates appear in the measure window. Below we can see a snapshot of the measurement of the angle:
Measure Window
There are three buttons at the bottom of the measure window. The functionality of these buttons is:
Done:
calculates/determines the measured property
Next:
de-selects all selected atoms, and begins new selection
Close:
destroys the measure window and exits from selection mode

2.4 XCrySDen Menus: short description

XCrySDen menu widget is located at the top of main window. There are the following menu-buttons: Palette, File, Display, Modify, AdvGeom, Properties, and Tools. They are shortly explained below, but the detailed description can be found here. I suggest you start by exploring various entries in the Display and Modify menus.
palette (Palette):
a background of the render window can be set here
File:
this menu is intended for Open, Save, Print, Exit operations
Display:
this menu is intended for various "display" possibilities. It consists of check- and radio-buttons.
  • By clicking appropriate checkbuttons inside Display menu one can render: Coordinates system (XYZ base vectors are displayed at the bottom-left of the render window), Atomic symbols, Crystal cells, Forces, Wigner-Seitz cells, Molecular surface.
  • By clicking the appropriate radiobutton one can choose among:
    1. primitive or conventional setting of the unit cell
      (Primitive cell Mode/Conventional Cell Mode radiobuttons)
    2. criteria of rendering the ball and spacefill sizes, either based on covalent or van der Waals radii
      (radiobuttons in "Balls As ..." and "SpaceFill As ..." cascade menus)
    3. display style of crystal cells, either as lines or rods
      (radiobuttons in "Crystal Cells As ..." cascade menu)
    4. crystal unit type ("Unit of Repetition ..." cascade menu). One can choose among Unit Cell and Translational asymmetric unit. What do we mean by this? Simply rendering just atoms belonging to the zero reference unit cell would not appear very nice. Why? Let us take for example an fcc unit cell. The atoms belonging to this cell have the following crystal (i.e. fractional) coordinates: (0,0,0); (1/2,1/2,0); (1/2,0,1/2); (0,1/2,1/2). If solely this atoms are rendered they appear as shown on the left of the below figure. Instead, what one really wants is the shown on the right of the figure:
      Translational asymmetric unit       Nicely
                                                                    cut unit cell
      The content displayed on the left of the figure is called Translational asymmetric unit, while the one on the right is called "nicely cut unit cell" or shortly Unit Cell.
Modify:
this menu is dedicated to: (i) modifying miscellaneous items, like various colors (for example: atom and cell colors), atomic radii, widths of bonds and cells, ball-factor, tessellation-factor, ...; (ii) setting the display of forces, Wigner-Seitz cells, molecular surfaces, animation. Read more ...
AdvGeom:
this menu is mented solely for CRYSTAL GUI. Here one can manipulate an existing structure by various procedures. Among supported options are: (i) cutting a slab out of a crystal, (ii) generating a supercell, (iii) adding, removing and substituting atoms, ...
Properties:
this menu is mented solely for CRYSTAL GUI. Here one can perform some property analysis. Among supported options are the plotting of (i) band widths, (ii) density-of-states, (iii) band structure (one can select th k-path inside Brillouin zone graphically), (iv) electronic densities and electrostatic potentials as 2D contours or 3D isosurfaces.
Tools: (in old versions this menu was called Analysis)
A few useful tools can be found here. This includes: Color Scheme, Data-Grid, k-path Selection and Periodic Table of Elements.

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This document was last modified on Tue May 31 10:23:30 CEST 2005