jyarger/molecular-blender

blend molecules!

Molecular Blender

An import plugin specialized for .xyz files of molecules used in, for example, quantum chemistry

Capabilities

• imports using linked objects making rapid changes to the aesthetics feasible
• basic styling (stick model, VDW, ball and stick, wireframe) and sensible defaults
• support for animations (input as multiframe .xyz files) including dynamically drawing bonds
• find and fill in aromatic rings
• draw spheres sitting on atoms to represent atomic charges and dynamically scale them during an animation
• draw molecular orbital isosurfaces with .cube files or .molden files

Installation

There are two basic ways to install Molecular Blender, either through the Blender interface or directly adding it to Blender's internal list of addons.

Through Blender

The simplest way to install would be to download this repository as a zip file. Then, navigate to User Preferences in Blender and select the Add-ons pane. Click the Install from File... button at the bottom of the panel and select the .zip file of the repository. Then activate it in the Add-ons window (and hit Save User Settings for good measure).

Manual

You can also add a directory or a symlink directly to the addons folder. The recommended way for developers to install Molecular Blender is with a symlink:

ln -s /path/to/molecular/blender/repo /path/to/blender/scripts/addons/

and then it should appear in the list of Import-Export addons that can be activated like any other addon.

On Mac OS X, the path for a user supplied addon is

/Users/<username>/Library/Application\ Support/Blender/<version>/scripts/addons

where <username> and <version> should be replaced with your username and the Blender version you are using.

Design

The only guiding design principle so far has been to try and separate the molecular data structures (Molecule, Bond, Atom) from the Blender manipulations. This is subject to change.