3DMolSym

3DMolSym
http://www.molwave.com/software/3dmolsym/3dmolsym.htm
3DMolSym is an educational program designed to visualize the symmetry elements of molecules and to animate the corresponding symmetry operations in an interactive 3D environment.

HCI things I like

• The rotate controls update a small icon to show the axis around which it rotate
• Animation usage to explain symmetry
• Captured view with a simple click (the button then becomes the view selection button)
• The technology: it is a Shockwave web application.
• The usage of transparent elements to show movement, symmetry planes
  

What I do not like

• Captured view has a reset button that does not do the intuitive thing i.e. resetting the saved view.
• The small view for panning on the left is a duplicate of the main window useful only because the main window has no pan method (e.g. the three mouse button function for rotate/zoom/pan)
  

HCI and ChemViz

After a long hiatus, I'm back again.

Here at CSCS we are planning the development of a Molecular Structure Editor. There are so few free ones and our users ask for specific functionalities not found even in commercial ones.

But before starting we need to find funding and people, so I have time to study HCI (Human-Computer Interaction).

My plan is:

1. Use this blog to collect good/bad HCI ideas from existing Chemistry Visualization tools
2. Start from introductory HCI texts to have a foundation of the field
3. Prototype, prototype...