VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Tue Nov 28 2006 - 14:09:03 CST

Hi,
  The geometric coordinates exported by VMD are in single precision
floating point. I would think this would be sufficient, except that
it's likely you're getting a large scaling factor and thus the floating
point format string may be hurting the precision. If you're willing to
try a few tests, I could make some minor changes to the string formatting
and see if your STL printing package will both load the file correctly,
and also get better preserved surface precision in the triangle mesh.
If you want to try this, I'll need to know what platform you're currently
running on, and which version of VMD you've been using to test with thus far.

Cheers,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Tue, Nov 28, 2006 at 02:47:11PM -0500, Frederick Sachs wrote:
> We have been trying to make 3D surface model of molecules using our 3Dd
> printer, but the VMD renderer resolution, while fine for the normal
> display, is not fine enough to create molecules without gaps that will
> not pass the printer software. We can make about 1" ^3 models since the
> print width of the printer is 0.011" and the rendering is adequate to
> avoid gaps.
>
> We would like to make bigger models, say up to 10"^3 so we need the
> model to be rendered to a resolution > 1:1000. Is there a way for VMD to
> do this and to transfer the data to an STL file?
> --
>
> *Dr. Frederick Sachs*
>
> *Center for Single Molecule Biophysics*
>
> *Physiology and Biophysical Sciences*
>
> *301 Cary Hall, SUNY*
>
> *Buffalo**, NY 14214***
>
> *Voice Mail (716) 829-3289 x105*
>
> *FAX (716) 829-2569*
>
> *Email:** sachs_at_buffalo.edu*
>
> *www.sachslab.buffalo.edu*
>
>
>
> "The secret to eternal youth is arrested development."
>
> "Gravity cannot be held responsible for people falling in love." Einstein
>
> "What counts can't always be counted; what can be counted doesn't always
> count." Einstein
> 

-- 
NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
Email: johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu                 Phone: 217-244-3349
  WWW: http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/      Fax: 217-244-6078