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CrystalMaker - 8.2

Build, display, manipulate crystal and molecular structures.

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All Time:	(4.3)
This Version:	Not rated (0.0)
Current Version:	8.2
Release Date:	2009-05-12
License:	Update
Downloads (this version):	277
Downloads (all versions):	15,461
Price:	$399.00

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Product Description:

Welcome to CrystalMaker: an award-winning Mac program for building, displaying and manipulating all kinds of crystal and molecular structures.

Easy and Flexible. Spectacular, photo-realistic models are just one drag-and-drop away! CrystalMaker can auto-detect major file formats and generate structures right away. All aspects of the model can be extensively customized, with a wide range of photo-realistic or stylized

What's new in this version:

High-Contrast Red/Blue Stereo. CrystalMaker 8.2 provides even more spectacular 3D imaging, using a new high-contrast rendering model to give crisper, and even more tangible stereo graphics in the "Greyscale" rendering mode.
Colour Red/Blue Stereo. Coloured 3D stereo models can now be viewed "out-of-the-screen" using red/blue spectacles. This is in addition to the bold greyscale and black-and-white red/blue stereo options; simply choose Stereo Red/Blue from the Rendering menu, and leave the colour mode set to Colour. Please note that when using Red/Blue Colour Stereo, you may wish to edit some of the colours in your plot - specifically, colours with hues close to pure red or pure cyan (since these are cut out by the right-, and left- lenses, respectively). For best results, choose colours with hues that are intermediate between red and cyan, i.e., the colour ranges orange-green and indigo-blue.
Accelerated Background Graphics. CrystalMaker 8.2 uses a highly-efficient mechanism for combining high-resolution background graphics (pictures or gradients) with your structural model, allowing faster manipulation than ever before. You can drag-and-drop a high-resolution graphics file (in any supported format, including PNG, TIFF and JPEG) into the graphics pane, for use as a background picture. In previous versions of the program, performance could suffer if the background picture was very large. CrystalMaker 8.2 provides performance that is orders of magnitude faster.
Comprehensive New Background Gradients. CrystalMaker 8.2 provides extensive new gradient shading options. Two brand new options - radial and reflected - plus new angle and scaling parameters, give professional-level control to your model display. The Background pane of the Model Options window now includes slider controls for adjusting gradient angle and scale - options which are available for each of the four new gradient types: Linear, Reflected, Radial and Diamond. Note that the old "Up" and "Down" options are now replaced by the "Linear" option, which gives you full control over the gradient direction and scale. The old "inwards" and "outwards" options are replaced by the new "Diamond" option, and correspond to a 45° rotation. Gradients can be scaled and rotated, using the slider controls provided in the Background pane of the Model Options window. In addition, gradient starting- and ending- colours can be chosen independently of the "plain" background colour; the gradient colours can be switched, using a handy new "flip" icon.
Live Model and Rendering Controls. Starting with CrystalMaker 8.2, you can now adjust many Model and Rendering Options settings in real time - including reflectance settings, illumination direction, background shading and much more. Simply hold down the option/alt key as you click a button or adjust a slider control in the Model Options or Rendering Options windows.
Overview thumbnails can now be removed simply by dragging them outside the Overview pane.
Colour background pictures are now converted to greyscale when switching into the Greyscale rendering mode (Rendering > Greyscale), which is particularly useful when using the new high-contrast greyscale Red/Blue Stereo imaging. When switching back into the Colour rendering mode, the background picture reverts to a full-colour version.
Adding a background picture to an open structure, via drag-and-drop into the Graphics pane, now causes the Background pane of the Model Options window to be updated.
Textboxes with double arrows or lines are now displayed correctly when printed or exported at high resolution. In earlier versions of the program, the arrow/line was drawn passing across any text.
The Remove button in the Symmetry Options dialog is now correctly enabled or disabled, depending on whether or not a GEP row is selected.
In Red/blue stereo and stereo-pair plots, the displayed view direction now bisects the angle between the left- and right-hand images. (Previously, the right-hand image corresponded to the displayed view, with the left-hand image rotated by the stereo-separation angle.)
Black-and-White plots now show dashed-line bonds correctly at all times. In previous versions, the dashes could become obscured if the background colour was not set to pure white.

Operating System Requirements:

This product is designed to run on the following operating systems:

Mac OS X 10.5 Intel
Mac OS X 10.5 PPC
Mac OS X 10.4 Intel
Mac OS X 10.4 PPC

Feedback Summary:

This Version:
Overall Rating:	Not rated (0.0)	Features:	Not rated (0.0)	Support:	Not rated (0.0)
Ease of Use:	Not rated (0.0)	Quality / Stability:	Not rated (0.0)	Price:	Not rated (0.0)

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The best crystallographic program for Macintosh - Version: 8.0.2, 1/24/2008 12:00AM PST

(1 of 1 users found this comment useful)

info689

I have used CrystalMaker and CrystalDiffract for almost a year now (for inorganic solid state crystal structures). To sum it up - it is very intuitive and it has been stable up to now.

Upsides:
- It is very easy to integrate it with SHELX (e.g. using TextMate scripts) or GSAS (Rietveld refinements), so the overall workflow is much quicker than using WinGX/Diamond on Windows computers, for example.

- The new Spotlight integration is quite useful (although some search tags do not seem to work properly yet), especially if you have got lots of crystal structures on your hard disk.

- The V8.x interface leaves much less clutter on your desktop than the previous version (especially if you are using Leopard's Spaces).

- Renderings for both publications and presentations are magnificent.

- Nice integration of CrystalDiffract (high quality simulation of powder patterns).

- Much more intuitive than Diamond (Windows) for ordinary crystal structures.

- Cambrige Soft has got special concessions for grad/undergraduate students, which makes the price tag quite reasonable.

- Great customer support.

Downsides:
- Lack of visualising magnetic structures.

- Lack of visualising electronic structures / 3-dimensional electron density maps (e.g. from Wien2K or STUTTGART-LMTO)

Hopefully, these missing features will be added sometime in the future.

Oh so sexy - Version: 6.3.6, 7/14/2004 10:51AM PST

loehman

But way too expensive for a poor high school teacher. However, I'm sure the demo version would be enough to demonstrate 3-D structure.

I have discovered… - Version: 6.1.1, 2/22/2003 11:15AM PST

Cryopad

CrystalMaker at an International Conference for crystallographers some years ago. Since then, it has been regularely improved and this OS X release is great apart the fact that it doesn't handle efficiently magnetic structures.