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Design schemes: Creating atom color, style and radii resources

Klaus Brandenburg -- 13 December 2012, 14:00 GMT

The most convenient way to create a design scheme is from an existing structure picture. This article shows you how to derive a set of resources for atom main colors, atom styles, and radii.

Since there are a lot of settings that affect the appearance of a structure picture, such as layout, background color, rendered or flat, enlargement factor etc., the easiest way to create a design scheme is to build a structure picture, and then to call the "Create Design Scheme" command from the "Design Schemes" sub-menu in the "Picture" menu.

The disadvantage is that you have just a small subset of different elements or atom types in your structure. If you take the design scheme created from that structure and apply it to another structure but with different elements, these other elements' colors (and styles and radii) would not be affected by the design scheme. The screen shot below shows the design scheme settings dialog and the set of atom main colors generated from that structure - here just W, S, P, C, and H.

Screenshot of COD:1004001 with Design Scheme settings dialog and table of atom main colors

To extend the definition of atom main colors, atom styles, and radii for ball and space-filling representation to other elements than just W, S, P, C, and H,, run "Edit" in the "Design Scheme" dialog. Enter the element symbols in the corresponding row of the "Elements or atom types" column and confirm with "OK", example below:

Atom main color dialog with adding elements to W

Note: The "Design Scheme Manager" will allow you to import and export resources for element colors, atom type styles, and radii -- but this will not yet be available in the first beta versions of Diamond 4.

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Creation and application of design schemes -- 4 December 2012, 10:30 GMT
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