Diamond Version 5 User Manual: Display of structure picture

Anti-aliasing

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Diamond uses anti-aliasing to smooth the edges of objects like spheres representing atoms or cylinders representing bonds, etc. Besides this, the "resolution" of objects, i.e. the number of stacks and slices used for rendering these objects can be changed. The resolution can temporarily be reduced (and the frame rate increased) when rotating or shifting in tracking or grab mode.

See also the article "Rendered and flat representation" about rendered representation.

Use the Rendering page of the Tools/Options dialog to define the settings for object "resolution" and anti-aliasing.

Resolution of objects in rendered representation

In the upper part of the dialog page you define the "resolution" (i.e. the number of stacks and slices) of the spherical and cylindric objects (atoms, ellipsoids, thick bonds, etc.) that OpenGL uses in "rendering mode". The default value is 20.

Resolution minimum and maximum
Define a value (minimum equals maximum) or a value range for the "resolution". If you define a range, the minimum value is the lower boundary for objects that appear smallest in the picture, whereas the maximum value is the upper boundary for extrapolation of the resolution. This maximum value will be used for an atom having a diameter as big as the drawing frame. The lowest value is 10, the highest 80. Please note that the higher the resolution values the slower the graphic performance.

Reduce resolution while moving in tracking or grab mode
If this checkmark is set, Diamond uses resolution values as small as possible in order to temporarily accelerate drawing (and to increase the frame rate) when moving (rotating, shifting) the structure in tracking mode or grab mode.

Reset defaults
You can use this push button to restore the "resolution" to the factory default value, i.e. 20.

Anti-aliasing

The lower part of the dialog page deals with anti-aliasing. The anti-aliasing, i.e. the smoothing of edges of the graphic objects, is performed by so-called "supersampling". This means the picture is rendered into a bigger bitmap, which is then scaled down into the (smaller) structure picture window by interpolating the pixel colors when combining a set of e.g. 2x2 or 3x3 pixels to one pixel each. This kind of anti-aliasing is used on screen but not for printing. (That is because printers usually use significantly higher dpi values for printing than the computer screen has.)

Note: In the current version of Diamond, anti-aliasing is used only in rendered but not yet in flat representation. This may be extended to flat representation in a future version.

Anti-aliasing
Set this checkmark in order to activate anti-aliasing by supersampling.

Super-sampling factor
Define the integer factors, e.g. 2x2, to scale the buffering bitmap in both x- and y-direction.

No anti-aliasing while moving in tracking or grab mode
Set this checkmark to temporarily avoid anti-aliasing (and decreasing the frame rate) when moving (rotating, shifting) the structure in tracking mode or grab mode.

Reset defaults
Pushing this button restores the factory default values, i.e. no anti-aliasing is used.

Previous article: Color differentiation
Next article: Unit cell vectors a, b, c, and atom vectors