WM3D VMD plugin

Setup for WM3D VMD plugin. The following setup is basically common for Linux/Windows.

Requirements

  • VMD
  • Python (VMD python support is not necessary) (/usr/bin/env will be necessary for Linux system)

Adobe Projector Content Debugger (available online) is very useful for creating flash movie. (NOT NECESSARY) Python is used internally to build XML data and is thus essential. Tested versions of python are 2.6.6@Debian/squeeze, 2.7.1@Fedora15, 2.7.2@Windows.

Register Plugin

First of all, we must register wm3d plugin to VMD. There are two standard ways to register.

If you put wm3d plugin into the VMD directory, the easier way. You should copy scripts/wm3d directory into VMD/plugins/noarch/tcl. If you don't put that to VMD directory, you should add the following line to configuration file (Standard localtion for Linux: /usr/local/lib/vmd/.vmdrc or ~/.vmdrc, for Windows: C:\Program Files\University of Illinois\VMD\vmd.rc)

  1. set auto_path [linsert $auto_path 0 {/somewhere/wm3d/scripts/tcl}]
, where /somewhere depends on your wm3d setup.

You should then add the following line to the configuration file .vmdrc or vmd.rc (see above).

  1. vmd_install_extension wm3d wm3d_tk "Visualization/WM3D"
If you renamed the directory name, you must modify "wm3d" to your directory name. You can modify the string "Visualization/WM3D" as you like. In the recommended setting above, wm3d plugin is registered in the "Visualization" group in "Extension" menu of VMD as "WM3D".

Initial setup is over. Please see Guide for the usage.

Environmental Variables

Some environmental variables can be used.

  • HAXE : location of haXe executable
  • WM3D : location of wm3d directory
  • WMPLAYER : location of the viewer (projector debugger or web browser will be a reasonable choice)

If you set these variables, corresponding fields of the VMD-WM3D-window will be filled with those values. You do not need to set "HAXE" variable usually, since normal installation set "PATH" environmental variable properly. The other two variables are worth to set even in standard use.