From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Tue Oct 02 2012 - 16:56:55 CDT

Marcos,
  To help you narrow this down, I'll need to know what version of VMD
you are running, and on which operating system. Also, did you compile it
yourself, or is it one of the standard VMD binaries from the web site?
It works for me, so there must be something going on with your system that
is different than what I'm doing.

Cheers,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Tue, Oct 02, 2012 at 02:52:58PM -0700, Marcos Ackel wrote:
> Hi John,
>
> do you think next week you'll have a bit of time to give a look at this issue? I'm stuck with this - I'll receive a Novint Falcon next week, but it's my intention to use it together with the SpaceNavigator (one to hold the molecule, another to apply force on it). It seems (as described bellow) that the button to connect to the molecule is not working when you enter the "tracker" mode.
>
>
> Thank you,
>
> Marcos Ackel
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Marcos Ackel <mvackel_at_yahoo.com>
> To: John Stone <johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu>
> Cc: VMD_List <vmd-l_at_ks.uiuc.edu>
> Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2012 5:43 PM
> Subject: Re: vmd-l: Using Tools (grab, tug, etc)
>
> Hi John,
>
> it seems that there is something wrong. This is exactly what I've being doing. Just to be sure, I've repeated everything from the beginning. Both, for the SpaceNavigator and for the joystick - same results:
>
> 1) Started VMD
> 2) New Molecule (alanin.psf) -> Load     (alanin.psf is from the NAMD tutorial)
>
> 3) Browse (alanin.pdb) -> Load
>
> 4) (menu)/Graphics/Tools      (Tool Controls dialog opens)
> 5) button "create tool"     (a Grab tools appears at the OpenGL Display)
> 6) "Position" dropdown box    and select SpaceballTracker
>     vmd console:    Info) Opening VMD console Spaceball device (tracker).
> 7) Buttons drowpdown box and select SpaceballButtons
>     vmd console:   Info) Opening VMD console Spaceball device (buttons).
> 8) Press SpaceNavigator right (mode or button 2) button  6 times
>
>     vmd console:    Info) Spaceball set to user mode                                Info) Spaceball set to rotation/translation mode   
>                                 Info) Spaceball set to dominant axis rotation/translation mode
>                                 Info) Spaceball set to scaling mode
>
>                                 Info) Spaceball set to animate mode
>                                 Info) Spaceball set to tracker mode
> (now, if I move the SpaceNavigator, the tool moves in the OpenGL view - as expected)
> 9) Press SpaceNavigator left (button1):
>     vmd console:    Info) Spaceball reset view orientation
>
>
> Tried many different combinations of buttons, tool creation orders, and different uses of the "Assigned Rep" tab (in the Tool Controls dialog), different tools  with the same result. Also, tried the Tug Tools in a running Interactive MD. In all cases I was not able to connect to the molecule.
>
> I've looked at the source code trying to identify what should be the called function to connect the molecule, but couldn't conclude anything.
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Marcos
>
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: John Stone <johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu>
> To: Marcos Ackel <mvackel_at_yahoo.com>
> Cc: VMD_List <vmd-l_at_ks.uiuc.edu>
> Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2012 6:40 PM
> Subject: Re: vmd-l: Using Tools (grab, tug, etc)
>
>
> Marcos,
>   I thought I'd said this already previously in our earlier email exchanges,
> but in order to use the SpaceNavigator with the 6-DOF "Tools" menu, you
> must set the SpaceNavigator to "tracker" mode.
>
> You can do this by pressing the mode button until the VMD console window says:
>   Info) Spaceball set to tracker mode
>
> Once it is set to tracker mode, you can create a new tool in the Tools
> menu, set it to "grab", or "tug", etc.  Once it is created, and you've
> associated its position/buttons with the SpaceNavigator, then, when you
> press the first button (the one that usually acts as a "reset view" button
> when in normal mode), that will activate the grab/tug function on whatever
> molecule you have loaded.
>
> The behavior the SpaceNavigator depends on which mode its in.  In the "normal"
> mode, you are correct that the buttons are set to reset the view or change
> the mode.  But, in "tracker" mode, the first button activates the grabbing
> or pulling behavior rather than resetting the view...
>
> Hopefully you can get this working with very little difficulty.  If you
> still have problems, let me know.
>
> Cheers,
>   John Stone
>   vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu
>

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