VMD Plugin Library

VMD 1.8.3 Plugin Update 2, Released 07/14/2005

This is the second plugin update for VMD 1.8.3. The release includes new and improved molecule file reader/writer plugins, as well as improvements to several of the GUI extension plugins included with VMD 1.8.3.

New features and improvements in this plugin release:

  • New BioCoRE plugin allows a running VMD to attach to a BioCoRE server, exchange saved states with collaborators, etc.
  • New graphical interface for the membrane plugin
  • New graphical interface for the autoionize plugin
  • New NAMDEnergy plugin for energy evaluation
  • New AutoPSF plugin to partially automate simple structure building tasks
  • New Color Scale Bar plugin for rendering the current color scale in the VMD graphics window. Future versions will be more featureful.
  • New STING Millenium interface plugin provides a simple method for querying the STING server for a given PDB code, residue, and chain ID. Future versions will be much more featureful.
  • Improved SPIDER plugin for reading CryoEM maps and other volumetric data processed by SPIDER.
  • Redesigned GAMESS plugin reads much more data, in support of the new qmtool plugin.
  • Unix DCD trajectory files are correctly created, clobbering any existing trajectory file rather than appending to it.

Installing the new plugins:

The link below will download the latest directory of VMD 1.8.3 compatible plugins for all of the supported platforms. We intend to provide a new "updater" plugin soon. Until the updater plugin is ready, you may manually unpack this plugin distribution into a directory on your system. Once unpacked, you can use the new plugins either by replacing the plugin directory in your installed VMD distribution, or by adding commands similar to the following examples, to your personal .vmdrc or vmd.rc file. In order to utilized updated GUI extensions, you must replace the plugins in your installed VMD distribution. If you only want updated molecule file plugins, the .vmdrc/vmd.rc based plugin update method is sufficient.

Unix and MacOS X .vmdrc additions: 

menu main on
# Load the molecule file reader plugins from ~/plugins/....
# This command will evaluate to something like:
#   vmd_plugin_scandirectory   /users/johns/plugins/SOLARIS2/molfile   *.so
vmd_plugin_scandirectory [file join $env(HOME) plugins [vmdinfo arch] molfile] *.so

Windows vmd.rc additions: 
menu main on
# Load the molecule file reader plugins from c:/plugins
vmd_plugin_scandirectory   c:/plugins/WIN32/molfile   *.so

Newest VMD 1.8.3 plugins for all platforms

Note that when unpacked, this archive will consume approximately 70MB of disk space. Once unpacked, you may delete the subdirectories which correspond to architectures you don't need or use.

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