ADFPLT: GUI for volume Maps

Adfplt is a tool [Autschbach, 1999 #1110] to graphically display orbitals, densities or potentials computed in a 2D or 3D grid. You can view the picture on your screen, or put it in a postscript file for printing, or send it to another device. This auxiliary program is installed with the other programs of the ADF package, but only if you have previously installed a few graphical libraries and you have correctly assigned the appropriate Environment Variable GKSGR_LIB to point to the directory where these libraries reside. See the Installation manual for details.

For more extensive graphics possibilities we recommend the ADF-GUI, which will be actively supported and developed. Details on the ADF-GUI are available from SCM (info@scm.com).

These (graphical) libraries are not part of ADF, but are available for free from their developers in Jülich, Germany. The libraries may not be available for all platforms, which then implies that cannot use adfplt on such machines. Consequently we cannot guarantee the continuity of their availability in any respect.

Adfplt requires a TAPE41 file (with that name) computed by densf, using a 3D grid. You start the program by invoking its executable with as argument the data you want to display.

$ADFBIN/adfplt Sec%Var

Sec%Var must reference existing data on your TAPE41 file. To get a survey of all data on TAPE41, use the pkf facility.

$ADFBIN/pkf TAPE41 > t41_ascii

You can then inspect the ascii dump of the TAPE41 contents to determine what you can display.

After having typed the command, you get a list of available output devices to send the picture to. Select one of them by typing the indicated number, for instance 211 to get the picture on your screen. (The appropriate choice may depend on your system settings, but a little try-and-error will soon help you on your way).

You may add options in the call of adfplt.

$ADFBIN/adfplt -opt1 -opt2 [...] Sec%Var

You get a list of all available options by typing

$ADFBIN/adfplt -help

In the current implementation, each run is one-time shot. To get another picture you have to start the program again.