From: Vermaas, Joshua (Joshua.Vermaas_at_nrel.gov)
Date: Mon Mar 13 2017 - 11:25:21 CDT

Hi Daniel,

The way I'd do it is to go via the STL interface. Its been a while since I tried this, but files with the stl extension are automatically picked up to be loaded via VMD's STL reader. Note that VMD cannot read binary ascii files (http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/plugins/molfile/stlplugin.html), so if you use a library to write out the files, make sure you write out the ascii version (https://pypi.python.org/pypi/numpy-stl).

-Josh

On 03/13/2017 02:14 AM, Daniel Brooks wrote:
Hi all,

I am generating surface meshes that I would like to import into VMD. These meshes are stored in python as lists of verts and faces.

It looks like MSMS surface meshes and polygon meshes are supported for file import - but I haven't seen documentation on the structure of these files. Anyone know how to import surfaces into VMD?

Best,
-Dan

Daniel Brooks
PhD Candidate in Applied Physics
California Institute of Technology