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- Quick Guide to
- Ball & Stick 3.0 Demo
-
- System Requirements
- Ball & Stick will run on Macintosh Plus and later models. All features are
- fully functional in the demo version with the following limitations:
- 40 atoms per file and printed pages are superimposed with a banner.
- Ball & Stick requires system 6.0.2 or later. For color, system 6.0.5 or later
- with 32-bit QuickDraw is recommended. To use the demo movies HyperCard version
- 2.0 or later is recommended.
- Ball & Stick 3.0 is System 7 compatible.
-
- Dealing with HyperCard stacks
- When you open the MovieMaker demos, clicking the mouse will start and stop the
- animation.
- To quit from HyperCard stop the animation and enter
- Command Q (Apple/Clover key and Q key at same time).
-
- Installation Procedure
- Ball & Stick is easy to install:
- 1. Lock the original disk (if it is not locked already).
- 2. Copy all of the files to a folder on your hard disk.
- 3. Move the folder marked Put contents into system folder into your system
- folder. This contains the files B&S.settings and B&S.lib. There are some
- sample settings files for you to try in the settings examples folder. The
- settings file is used to load the default program settings and atom definitions
- at startup time.
-
- Startup
- Double-click on the Ball & Stick application icon. You will be prompted to open
- a coordinate file. Choose one of the files from the data examples folder. After
- you have started the application, you may open files from the file menu. You
- may have two files open at one time.
-
- To introduce you to Ball & Stick here are a few operations for you to try.
-
- Rotating the molecule
- Select the Transform menu and Rotate(mouse).
- Hold down the mouse inside the circle and drag to rotate.
- Select Rotate around axis and choose an axis. This rotation may be repeated by
- pressing the <enter> key.
-
- Selecting atoms
- You may highlight an individual atom by clicking on it with the mouse. To
- select more than one, hold down <shift> key while clicking on the atom.
- Double-click on a selected atom to display the control window.
- This gives quick access to the following commands:
- rotation
- xy-translation
- xz-translation
- distance change (2 or more atoms selected)
- angle change(3 or more atoms selected)
- torsion change (4 or more atoms selected)
- + zoom-in
- - zoom-out
-
-
- Display Model
- Change the type of display to whatever you prefer from the Model menu. The
- overlay skeleton, labelling and depth-shading may be toggled on and off.
-
-
- Customizing
- Use View menu to customize the background in Change Background. Change to black
- by dragging the cursor down the vertical bar. Obtain a full-screen image with
- Full Screen option.
- The menu bar appears when you click the mouse in the menu region.
- Try customizing the size, color and depth of shading of each of your atoms from
- the View menu.
-
- Real-time operations
- Obtain a stereo image with the Stereo View option. Set up a series of rotations
- with the File menu Rotation Animation option. Select the number of rotations
- required and set to Screen Only. Select degree of rotation and watch you stereo
- image rotate.
-
- Clipping
- Return to a single image (by selecting Stereo View again) and rotate the
- molecule with the mouse (Transform menu) until it appears end on (looking into
- the screen). Select View menu Front & Back Clipping to obtain a set of images
- from three angles. Drag the grey areas until you have isolated a small section
- of the molecule and select. You will now have a clipped region which you can
- easily manipulate. This is useful for dealing with large molecules. To perform
- several manipulations without updating the image each time you can first select
- Freeze Display.
-
- Build up your molecule
- Using the Build menu, you can add new atoms to your molecule or join fragments
- from the library. Select a group of atoms (at least 3) first and a box will
- appear asking for the bond length, angle and torsion required. A more extensive
- library is supplied with the full version and you can add your own structure to
- it.
-
- Import files
- To see what types of file format you can import go to File, Import and view the
- options. Among these you will find the Cambridge Structural Database and
- Protein Structure Databank (Brookhaven) formats.
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