Q.206 - How can I get what I want with symm_object ?

The questions were: "I am looking at the packing of my AMORE solutions in O and have a couple of questions :

1) why O always put symmetry_objects around the origin, instead of around my input molecule, or simply put them in the SAME unit cell?

2) how to color each of symmetry related molecules in a different color, this way any overlap would be straight forward to find? I guess I could aply one symop at a time, then naming and coloring each of them differently. There must be a macro out there to do this more efficiently."

1) why O always put symmetry_objects around the origin

• -> use centre_zone before issuing the sym_obj command

2) how to color each of symmetry related molecules in a different color

• -> you can't; they inherit the colour from the original object if you want to colour them differently use sym_sphere instead

You can also use PACMAN plus the file://rose.bmc.uu.se/pub/gerard/omac/auto_amore.com script to screen out poorly packing solutions.

You can also use XPAND to generate one unit cell (or asymm unit) full of atoms

Valerie Biou suggested w.r.t. the second issue: "Although you can't have different colors, it helps me to color the original object with paint_ramp using the residue ordering, so that you can at least follow the chain and often distant regions come in contact so you can distinguish them."