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atomselect
Atom selection is the primary method to access information about
the atoms in a molecule. It works in two steps. The first step is to create a
selection given the selection text, molecule id, and optional frame
number. This is done by a function called atomselect, which returns the
name of the new atom selection. the second step is to use the created
selection to access the information about the atoms in the selections.
- list: Return a list of all undeleted atom selections.
- keywords: Return a list of all recognized keywords in
an atom selection text.
- molecule_id selection_text
[frame frame_number]
Creates a new atom selection and returns its name. The returned name
can be used as a Tcl proc in order to access the atom selection.
The "selection text" is the same as the selection language used in
the Graphics form and described in
Chapter §.
It is used to pick a given subset of the atom.
The text cannot be changed once a selection is made. Some of the terms
in the selection depend on data that change during a trajectory (so
far only the keywords 'x', 'y', and 'z' can change over time). For
these, the optional 'frame value' is used to determine which specific
frame to use. The frame number can be a non-negative integer, the word
"now" (the current frame), the word "first" (for frame 0) and "last"
(for the last frame).
Some examples are:
vmd> atomselect top "name CA"
atomselect0
vmd> atomselect 3 "resid 25" frame last
atomselect1
vmd> atomselect top "within 5 of resname LYR" frame 23
atomselect2
The newly created atom selection is a Tcl proc, which takes the following
options:
- num: Return the number of atoms in the selection.
- list: Return a list of the atom indices in the selection
(BTW, this is the same as "get index").
- text: Return the text used to create this selection.
- molid: Returns the molecule id used to create this selection.
- frame: Returns the animation frame associated with this selection. The
result will be either now, last, or an integer corresponding
to the frame. When the frame is now, the atom selection will use
atomic coordinates from the current frame for its associated molecule. If
the frame is last, the atom selection will always use coordinates
from the last frame. If the frame is a specific integer, the selection
will always use coordinates from that frame, even if the current animation
frame changes. Note that if a nonexistent frame is specified, the atomic
coordinates will all be taken to be .
- frame frame: Set the frame for the selection. frame should
be either now, last, or an integer.
- delete: Delete this object (removes the function).
- global: Moves the object into the global namespace. Atom
selections created within a Tcl proc that are not made global are
deleted when the proc exits.
- uplevel level: Moves the object to a new level in the
namespace stack. Works the same as the Tcl function uplevel.
- get attribute_list: Given a list of attributes, returns
a list containing the list of attribute values. See Tables
5.5 and 5.6 for the recognized
attribute keywords.
- set attribute_list values_lists: Set the attributes
in the attribute list with the values gven in the values lists. For
each attribute there must be a list of values; each value list must
contain either one element, or an element for each atom in the
selection.
- getbonds: returns a list of bondlists; each bondlist contains the
id's of the atoms bonded to the corresponding atom in the selection.
- setbonds: Set the bonds for the atoms in the selection; the second
argument should be a list of bondlists, one bondlist for each
selected atom.
- move 4x4 matrix: Applies the given transformation matrix to
the coordinates of each atom in the selection.
- moveby offset: move all the atoms by a given offset.
- lmoveby offset_list: move each atom by an offset given in the list.
- moveto position: move all the atoms to a given location.
- lmoveto position_list: move each atom to a point given by the appropriate list
element.
- writepdb [filename]: write the selected atoms to a pdb file.
If no filename is given, the text of the file is returned as a string.
- update: Update the atom selection based on the frame for the
selection (the frame can be specified using the frame option as
described above).
See Section § for more on
using atom selections for fun and profit.
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vmd@ks.uiuc.edu