Crystallography Teaching Aids

Software and On-Line Resources
for Crystallography Education

Warning: Major changes are underway!

Summary: This site is intended for the nonspecialist in crystallography and describes how to assemble a functioning crystallographic software package for PC that can be used in an advanced undergraduate laboratory setting. Very sophisticated and powerful crystallographic software packages are available, but at a cost of several thousands of $. A reasonably powerful crystallographic computing package can be assembled, however, from free or low cost components, but requires a larger time investment. In addition to providing pointers to a variety of free/low-cost crystallographic programs and commercial software packages, this site will also describe how to assemble these components to produce a complete crystallographic package running under Linux or DOS.

Crystallographic Software / Crystallography under Linux / Crystallography under DOS

Other On-Line Resources/ Instructional X-ray Data Sets

Crystallographic Software

This section contains information on free/low cost software that can be integrated into package and commercially available packages for structure determination on PC's.

Crystallography under

Crystallographic computing has traditionally been done on mainframe computers and UNIX workstations, only migrating to PC's running DOS in recent years. The size and complexity of the programs, however, limits their performance in a DOS environment. Linux is a copylefted (freely available) PC clone of the UNIX operating system. The Linux operating system provides a high-performance, multiuser, multitasking environment on your IBM PC for improved crystallographic computing.

Setting Up a Linux System

Crystallographic Computing in Linux

General Linux Information and Links

Crystallography under DOS


An inexpensive crystallographic software package can be assembled easily under DOS. While this package will not be as powerful or elegant as the Linux package, it will be workable. Follow the link above to find out how...

Other On-Line Resources for Crystallography Education

Instructional X-ray Data Sets

Marcus R. Bond
Department of Chemistry
Southeast Missouri State University
Cape Girardeau, MO 63701
E-mail: [email protected]

Last modified December 5, 1996

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