VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Thu Nov 14 2013 - 08:40:26 CST

Norman,
  You are correct. The existing implementation for Draw Multiple
Frames was designed to allow simple superposition of timesteps, but
does not currently allow for any properties other than coordinates
to be changed/modified during drawing. Part of the issue is that
some properties, such as secondary structure, only have a single
frame worth of storage within VMD at present, so it is not possible
to assign a different secondary structure for Draw Multiple Frames,
even if they were created as independent representations for the same
molecule. The workaround you describe, loading the frames as separate
molecules, though clearly undesirable, is probably the only good way
of accomplishing this at the moment. We are currently working on
developing a new secondary structure algorithm that greatly outperforms
STRIDE. Once this algorithm is complete, it will likely lead us to
make some significant changes to how VMD interacts with secondary
structure in general, making it feasible to animate time-varying
secondary structure without the need for scripts like sscache. This
is still a ways off, but we're slowly making progress...

Cheers,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 11:17:53AM +0100, Norman Geist wrote:
> Dear Developers,
>
>
>
> just wanted to tell that is unfortunately not possible to use "Draw
> Multiple Frames" for representations while updating copy's properties such
> as secondary structure by tracing the visualized frame, like "sscache"
> does. Any idea if it is actually possible by using the "Draw multiple
> Frames" feature? Otherwise one would have to write a script loading the
> frames wanted as individual molecules, which is not that elegant.
>
>
>
> Thanks in advance
>
>
>
> Norman Geist 

-- 
NIH Center for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/           Phone: 217-244-3349
http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/