From: Josh Vermaas (vermaas2_at_illinois.edu)
Date: Mon Feb 18 2013 - 09:11:48 CST

Hi Davide,

I've never used spring.tcl myself, but what the error message indicates
is that two variables aren't set. Normally, the line:

global vmd_pick_atom vmd_pick_mol

would load in the global variables vmd_pick_atom and vmd_pick_mol, and
you'd be happily on your way. However I believe that atomselections do
not set these variables, and so you are getting an error. Happily, there
are two ways of setting these variables: "Picking" an atom, and setting
the variables by hand. Picking an atom is done with the pick tool (not
an atomselection), which can be found under the Mouse heading of the VMD
main window (it has P as its shortcut). This will set many variables via
a TCL callback (see
http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/current/ug/node156.html if you are
curious). Setting it by hand is also possible. For your example inputs,
this will work.

source spring.tcl
set vmd_pick_atom 5
set vmd_pick_mol 0
spring

You can change the appearance of the spring by editing the appropriate
variables at the top of spring.tcl

Best of luck!
-Josh Vermaas
On 02/18/2013 07:26 AM, Davide Mercadante wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> Please accept my apologies if I am rising a stupid issue. I am trying
> to run the spring.tcl script available in the VMD-script library
> without any success so far and I am not able to understand what I am
> doing wrong.
> I successfully source the script with the command source script.tcl
> (the script is placed in the same DIR of the pdb file).
>
> Then I perform an atom selection for the atom where I want the spring
> to be drawn using the following command:
>
> atomselect 0 "index 5"
>
> And I get as a result of that an atom selection called atomselect0.
>
> Then I try to recall the proc spring that is in the spring.tcl file
> (the procedure doesn't seem to have any argument -- spring {} ).
> However, I get the following error:
>
> *can't read "vmd_pick_mol": no such variable*
>
> I think I am specifying the atomselection but somehow I am missing the
> molecule selection? In the atomselect command the "0" is to define
> molid 0, so why the script doesn't pick up the vmdpickmol variable?
> Apart from the atomselect command do I need to issue any additional
> command before calling the script?
>
> Thank you very much for your help.
>
> Cheers,
> Davide
>
> **********************************************
> Davide Mercadante Ph.D.
> /Postdoctoral Fellow/
> /Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies -- HITS/
> Schloss-Wolfsbrunnenweg, 35
> D-69118 Heidelberg, Germany.
> **********************************************
>
>