This tutorial will give a
brief introduction on the power of the RasMol program. Though the tutorial itself contains
instructions to proceed in a step by step method, the following suggestions
will help if you run into trouble.
1. At this point the RasMol program should already be on
your computer. Therefore the first two
steps concerning whether RasMol is the right program for you and how to
download the program are not necessary.
Please keep in mind that RasMol is the overall name of the program, but
that RasWin and RasMac are the Windows and Macintosh versions respectively. This distinction is not important, however,
do not let the names confuse you.
2. The most
important part of this tutorial is working with the molecules. You will want to click on the hot link
“Macintosh or unix” so that you have molecules to work with. You will need to save each of these
molecules to your desktop separately so that you have molecules to work
with. Most likely mouse clicking on the
hot links will automatically save files to your desktop. If instead of saving directly to your
desktop, another file is open that contains structural information with
coordinate data (x,y,z) you must go to the main command line and click File=>Save
As.
3. To open one of the newly saved molecules, open RasMol,
from your desktop. Select “file”
=> “open”. Files that can be
used by the RasMol program end in “.pdb”
It is possible that your file will not show under the desktop when
you select “file” => “open” in this case you will need to use the
load command in the command line (which has a white background and may be
hiding behind the black viewing window).
In the command line type load filename.pdb, (ie load
1hho.pdb). These files will not be
found unless they are saved on your computer.
Be careful not to confuse the number “0” with the letter “O” which often
look similar in pdb file names.