AtomicControl Manual

Building your first Crystal

New Crystal

As a quick tutorial, a common table salt crystal can be created using AtomicControl. Open AtomicControl and go to the File menu. Create a new crystal using File->New Crystal.

Setting up the Lattice

The first step is to define the lattice type of your crystal. In the case of table salt (NaCl) it is faced centered cubic (FCC). In the lattice panel you can also define the number of unit cells to create and some other lattice parameters. We will leave these as the default for now.

Defining you basis

In the basis atoms panel you can add the basis atoms that will make up the simplest unit of the crystal. NaCl has two basis atoms, a chlorine atom at (0 0 0) and a sodium atom at (1/2 0 0). Enter this information into the table of basis atoms

Viewing your Crystal

Now your crystal is complete. You may now view the crystal by clicking on the "3D View" panel. To rotate the crystal you can click anywhere on the crystal and drag it with the mouse. Happy Crystal building!!