Year 2011 Preview
December 17, 2010
The year 2010 is already closing, so first of all we would like to say "thank you"
for participating in the improvement of our products, for many fruitful discussions
as well as for the lot of ideas for new features! In fact, many of you also purchased
one or the other licence, keeping us busy as well... ;-)) This gets me right to
the next point:
Delay in finishing Diamond 4.0 and Match! 2.0
Just about a year ago, we announced new versions of Diamond (version 4) and Match!
(version 2), to be "released in 2010". We made a lot of progress in the development
of these new versions, with Match! 2 now slowly approaching the "beta" state, but
have not been able to finish the new versions "in time".
The main reason is that during the implementation of the new versions we quite frequently
reached a point where we had to decide if we should finish a certain feature as
fast (and cheap) as possible, or if we should carefully explore and maybe even completely
revise it. In order to maintain a high quality of our software products, we chose
the second option in most cases, taking into account that this would cause a significant
delay.
We will do our best to finish the new versions as soon as possible, but please understand
that we cannot give exact deadlines when the new versions will be finished!
The good news is that in spite of the delay we will not change our update policy
for Diamond and Match!: All customers who purchased (or will purchase)
one of these software packages after August 1, 2010 will be entitled
to update to the upcoming new versions free-of-charge (only shipping
costs must be paid if required).
Match! 2.0
The main improvements of version 2 are:
- Runs on Mac OS X, Linux and of course Windows
- Additional experimental patterns can be imported and visually compared to the main
experimental pattern
- Extremely comfortable handling of restraints as well as manually added entries
- Perpetual restrainting similar to Pearson's Crystal Data
- Saving/Loading of restraints/additional entries settings
- Improved automatics (e.g. automatic selection of multiple matching phases)
- Rietveld refinement using FullProf (probably not in first version 2.0 but in later
version 2.x)
Go to Match! version 2 preview...
Diamond 4.0
There will be a lot of new and enhanced functions, here the most outstanding ones:
- Closer integration and improved correlation of the different views (structure picture,
thumbnails, data sheet, tables, powder pattern, distances and angles, etc.).
- More intelligent automatic structure picture creation. Definition of building schemes and
design schemes.
- New "exploration" mode for much more intuitive studying of a crystal or molecular
structure and to preview neighbouring atoms and molecules.
- Enhanced functions for molecules, packing diagrams, and to find non-bonding contacts.
- Determination of atomic environments by calculation of Dirichlet domains. Creation
of Voronoi polyhedra as well as several
new functions for coordination polyhedra.
- Searching crystal structure databases AMCSD ("American Mineralogist Crystal Structure
Database") and
COD ("Crystallography Open Database") as well as CIF files from the
IUCr journals.
Go to Diamond version 4 preview...
Endeavour 1.8
Although no major update will come in 2011, we are intending to release a new version
1.8 of Endeavour with a "polished" user interface in the second half of 2011.
Pearson's Crystal Data 2011/12
Finally, of course there will be the next annual release of Pearson's Crystal Data (2011/12) in July/August 2011.
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