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                          CRYstalline Structures and DENsities

[Figure]
Property-planes: controlling display parameters

Table of Contents

Description of property-planes display parameters
   Property-plane controlling window
   Description of widgets functions
        Checkbutton: Apply to Planes #1/#2/#3
        Optionmenu: Select color basis
        Optionmenu: Select scale function
        Page: Display
        Page: Ranges
        Page: Expand
        Page: Isoline
        Animation Frame
            Label: Current Slide
            Scale: Animation Step
            Animation buttons
        Buttons on the bottom: [Hide]/[Close]/[Save Grid]/[Submit]

Description of property-planes display parameters

A property-plane is a 2D representation of property. It can be displayed as contours, color-plane, and contours + color-plane on a selected parallelepipedal region. In XCrySDen these plots can be achieved in two ways: (i) by calculating a property on parallelepipedal 2D region, or (ii) as an option when a property was calculated in a 3D cell region. Both ways are quite similar, but the second way is a bit more advanced as it support an animation of property-planes trough 3D region (all slices are displayed sequentially as animation).

Property-plane controlling window

When we are dealing with 2D grids the window, where the property-planes parameters can be set, looks like:
Property-plane
                                      Window
For the description of bi-cubic spline interpolation see the discussion about tri-cubic spline. All the rest is explained below. When we are dealing with 3D grids the property-planes parameters can be set on several different pages of Isosurface/Property-plane Controls window. This property-plane controlling window is shown below. Important: as there are many items on the below window, the figure was made interactive in order to facilitate easier explanation of items functions. Simply mouse-click appropriate item (widget) to get its explanation.
!!! This figure is inetractive !!!
Property-plane
switches to
                                          isosurface tab switches
                                          to plane #1 tab switches
                                          to plane #2 tab switches
                                          to Plane #3 tab applies
                                          all parameters inside this frame to Planes #1/#2/#3 applies
                                          all parameters inside this frame to Planes #1/#2/#3 applies
                                          all parameters inside this frame to Planes #1/#2/#3 selects
                                          the color basis for color plane selects
                                          the scale function for property plane selects
                                          Display tab selects
                                          Ranges tab selects
                                          Expand tab selects
                                          Isoline tab sets the
                                          Property-plane display options index
                                          label of the currently rendered property-plane slide sets
                                          the Animation step animation buttons hides
                                          this window closes
                                          this window saves
                                          the DataGrid to XSF file submits
                the new parameters and updates the
                                          isosurface/property-plane

Description of widgets functions

Checkbutton: Apply to Planes #1/#2/#3

Forces the current setting of all parameters inside the frame to apply to planes #1, #2, and #3. For each frame there is its own Apply to Planes #1/#2/#3 checkbutton.

Optionmenu: Select color basis

Here one can selects various color basis for the color-plane. The following color basis are available:
monochrome:
the color-plane is rendered in black&white fashion (dark=low values; bright=high values)
rainbow:
the color-plane is rendered in rainbow fashion (red=low values; purple=high values)
RGB:
the color-plane is rendered in Red/Green/Blue fashion (red=low values; blue=high values)
geographic:
the color-plane is rendered like the geographic map (i.e. see in blue, low-altitude regions in green, hilly regions in brown and mountains in pink&white).
blue-white-red:
the color is rendered in Blue-White-Red fashion (blue=low values, red=high values). This color-basis is very suitable for charge density difference plots.
Here you can see the colors of these color basis. The colors on the left represents low values, while the colors on the right represent the high values.
XCRYSDEN's color
                                          basis

Optionmenu: Select scale function

Here one can selects various scale functions for the property-planes. One can chose among: linear, logarithmic, square-root, cubic-root, exponential and Gaussian. For example for charge density plots the logarithmic scale is usually more appropriate as linear, whereas for charge density difference maps the linear scale is usually better.

Page: Display

Display Tab
The Property-plane display options are available in this page. The checkbuttons have the following meaning:
[display color plane]
renders the property as color-plane
[display isolines]
renders the property as contours
[transparent color plane]
makes the colorplane to appear transparent
[lighting of color-plane]
when selected, the colorplane will undergo the lighting, which means that its light-illumination (i.e. how bright it appears) will depend on its orientation, while if lighting is disabled then colorplane will show the same brightness regardless of it orientation.
[display thermometer]
will display the scale-legend ("thermometer") for the colorplane plot. The thermometer can be configured by widgets on the Thermometer settings frame.
[thermometer in toplevel]
will display thermometer in separate toplevel window, and looks like shown below. Press the [Print Thermo] button to print the thermometer.
Thermometer
                                                  Window
BEWARE: in order to print the thermometer it must be displayed in toplevel window. The thermometer that is displayed on the main-display window cannot be printed !!!
The meaning of the entries in the Thermometer settings frame is the following:
Format string: [ ]
the format of the numbers displayed in the thermometer is set here. The format syntax is the same as for C printf/scanf function.
Label: [ ]
sets the label of the thermometer
Number of tics: [ ]
sets the number of tics to be displayed in the thermometer
And finally, the font used in the thermometer can be set by pressing the [Set Font] button. IMPORTANT NOTE: press the [Submit] button to update new setting.

Page: Ranges

Ranges Tab
Here one can set the range for the plot, namely, lower and upper bound, and the number of the isolines.
Warning: press the [Submit] button to update new setting.

Page: Expand

Expand Tab
The radiobuttons and scales on this tab only appears for periodic structures. The widgets allows to control the display of the periodic replicas of the property-plane. I hope these widgets are self-explanatory and we can try them out by testing. Warning:
  1. press the [Submit] button to update new expand setting.
  2. The isosurface can be expanded just to the size of the currently displayed structure. Hence use the Modify-->Number of units drawn menu to change the number of displayed unit cells.

Page: Isoline

Isoline Tab
Here you can select the color theme of the contours. Contours can be either rendered in one color (chose the color by [set color] button) or as property color. This means the each contour will be colored according to the chosen color basis and its value. The width of the contour lines can be set in Isoline width: [ ] entry.

Animation Frame

The animation frame appears only if the grid is a 3D one. Then we have a possibility of animating property-planes through the third dimension.
Animation Frame

Label: Current Slide

This label displays the sequential number of the currently displayed property-plane among all available property planes.

Scale: Animation Step

Sets the animation step. For example the animation step=2 will display the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, ... slide.

Animation buttons

I hope this buttons are self-explanatory. Their meaning is (going from left to the right): to the first, animate backward, one step back, one step forward, animate forward, and to the last.

Buttons on the bottom: [Hide]/[Close]/[Save Grid]/[Submit]

At the bottom of Isosurface/Property-plane Controls the [Hide]/[Close]/[Save Grid]/ [Submit] buttons are located. The function of these buttons is as follows:
[Hide]
Hides the Isosurface/Property-plane Controls window. Hiding means that window is iconified, i.e. the window disappears and its icon appears on XCrySDen main render window. Pressing the icon deiconify the window
[Close]
Closes the window. The grid data will be flushed (cleared).
[Save Grid]
Saves the grid data in XSF format.
[Submit]
Loads new isosurface parameters and renders an updated isosurface.

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