From: Edward Lyman (edward.lyman_at_gmail.com)
Date: Mon Mar 11 2013 - 16:41:46 CDT

Hi all,

I am trying to figure out how the values are listed in the dx file written
by vmd. Below I copy a reply from Axel from a couple years back to a
similar Q. My question regards the ordering of the values... does

*ordered z fast, y medium, and x slow

*mean that as I roll through the values in the dx file, I read first a row
along z, then move one grid point along y and read another row of z, and
repeat until I have read a slice in the first yz plane? Then, move one grid
point in x and read another plane of yz values?

In other words, if I wanted to read the data into a 3 dim array indexed by
x, y, and z, what should the order of my loops be?

Best,
Ed

*> here is the blurb from the dx file reader in VMD that may be helpful: *
*> *
*> /* DX potential maps *
*> Â * *
*> Â * Format of the file is: *
*> Â * # Comments *
*> Â * . *
*> Â * . *
*> Â * . *
*> Â * object 1 class gridpositions counts xn yn zn *
*> Â * origin xorg yorg zorg *
*> Â * delta xdel 0 0 *
*> Â * delta 0 ydel 0 *
*> Â * delta 0 0 zdel *
*> Â * object 2 class gridconnections counts xn yn zn *
*> Â * object 3 class array type double rank 0 items { xn*yn*zn } [binary] *
*> data follows *
*> Â * f1 f2 f3 *
*> Â * f4 f5 f6 f7 f8 f9 *
*> Â * . *
*> Â * . *
*> Â * . *
*> Â * object "Dataset name" class field *
*> *
*> Â * Where xn, yn, and zn are the number of data points along each axis; *
*> Â * xorg, yorg, and zorg is the origin of the grid, assumed to be in
angstroms; *
*> Â * xdel, ydel, and zdel are the scaling factors to convert grid units
to *
*> Â * angstroms. *
*> Â * *
*> Â * Grid data follows, with a single or multiple values per line
(maximum *
*> Â * allowed linelength is hardcoded into the plugin with ~2000 chars), *
*> Â * ordered z fast, y medium, and x slow. *
*> Â * *
*> Â */ *