Manual: Coordinate system


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Diamond Version 5 User Manual: Display of structure picture

Coordinate system

Previous article: Legend of atom groups
Next article: Plane and line objects

A coordinate system displaying the current orientation of the current structure can be displayed at an arbitrary position of the structure picture.

"Settings" describes how to switch on or off the display of the coordinate system, to define the position, size and other settings.

"Relative vs. Absolute Positioning" compares between the two kinds of positioning the coordinate system.

Settings

You define all settings for the coordinate system representing the current orientation of the current structure picture in the Coordinate System dialog. To open this dialog, choose the Coordinate system command from the Objects menu. If the coordinate system is already displayed, you can also open the dialog with a double-click into the rectangle that surrounds the coordinate system or right-click and choose the corresponding command from the context menu.

Switching the coordinate system on or off

The main switch in the Coordinate System dialog is the checkbox Display coordinate system. This determines if the coordinate system is displayed or not. If not, all other controls in the dialog box are unavailable.

Position of the coordinate system

The position of the coordinate system refers either to the center of the structure picture or to one of the four corners. This is defined by the setting in the combo box Relative to:

center of picture	the values in X and Y define the horizontal and vertical distance of the origin of the displayed coordinate system from the center of the structure picture or the center of the structure window, rsp., in centimeters.
top left	the values in X and Y define the horizontal and vertical distance of the origin of the displayed coordinate system from the upper left corner of the structure picture or the structure window, in centimeters. This means, the position of the coordinate system depends on the size of the structure window (or of the page, if page view mode is used or when printed).
top right	dito, but referring to the upper right corner instead.
bottom left	dito, but referring to the lower left corner instead.
bottom right	dito, but referring to the lower right corner instead.

The position of the coordinate system relative to the center or a corner of the structure window or picture is defined in the two input fields Position X and Y, rsp. These values are given in centimeters. Positive values grow to the right and top rsp., negative values to the left and bottom rsp.

Style of the coordinate system

The coordinate system either represents the axes of the reference coordinate system or of the crystal coordinate system. Select the system from the Labels combo box:

a, b, c	The axes represent the axes of the crystal coordinate system, i.e. the cell vectors *a, b* and c.
x, y, z	The axes represent the axes of the reference coordinate system.

If the checkbox Arrowheads is checked, arrowheads are assigned to the tops of the axes of the coordinate system.

Size of the coordinate system

The input field Axes' lengths defines the maximum length of an axis of the coordinate system given in centimeters, that means the size of the coordinate system. An axis has maximum length if it is arranged parallel to the drawing area, else it is shorter corresponding to its projection.

The input field Axes' thickness defines the thickness of the lines which represent the axes, in millimeters.

Font and color

To change the font used to label the axes with 'a', 'b', and 'c' or 'x', 'y', and 'z', rsp., push the Font button, which opens the MS Windows standard font dialog. The size of the text is determined by the value in the input field Font size in centimeters. Please note that the point size field of the font in the MS Windows standard font dialog will be ignored. The attributes bold and italics will be ignored, too. The color for both text and axes is defined by the color select box Color.

Setting default values

The button Reset defaults resets all settings including the Display all checkbox to the "factory" settings, i.e. the settings that Diamond uses after it has been installed for the first time.

Relative vs. Absolute Positioning

Like for the legend of atom groups, the position of the coordinate system that represents the current orientation of the current structure picture either refers to the center of the structure picture (or the structure window, rsp.) or to one of its four corners. If you want to align the coordinate system to special objects of the structure picture, you should set the combo box Relative to to "center of picture". In this case the position remains even if you change the window's size or change to bitmap or printout page layout or if you print the structure picture. When using relative positioning, the position of the coordinate system adjusts automatically to its window's size. That leads to different absolute positions of the coordinate system on screen and printout rsp.

The effect is in principle the same as for the legend of atom types. For that compare the two screenshots in the article "Legend of atom groups: Relative vs. Absolute Positioning".

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Next article: Plane and line objects