Graphics Programs
This page describes various graphics programs developed and/or supported for use with GAMESS, primarily for use in visualizing GAMESS output.
NEW
MacMolPlt is now available for Mac OS X, Linux and Windows operating systems. MacMolPlt is extremely useful for showing GAMESS results. It was developed by Brett Bode specifically to show GAMESS results, such as orbitals, electron density, vibrational modes, and so on. Its journal reference is:
B.M.Bode and M.S.Gordon J. Mol. Graphics and Modeling, 16, 133-138 (1998)
There is also Ghemical-GMS which is a special version of the molecule builder Ghemical that can create GAMESS input files. The modified program was created in the group of Jan Jensen at the University of Iowa, and it runs under Linux, Windows, and MacOSX.
The GAMESS interface to Ghemical is being phased out in favor of a corresponding interface to the Avogadro program, which also runs on Windows, Macs, and Linux, and is significantly easier to install.
The GAMESS source code distribution contains some older X-windows programs for two dimensional graphics. These are: PLTORB for orbital contours, DENDIF for total density or density difference contour maps, MEPMAP for electrostatic potentials, and MOLPLT for structures. Similar capabilities are to be found in MacMolPlt (as well as many other programs). Look in the GAMESS source distribution's subdirectory named gamess/graphics for further information about these 2D programs.
Finally, here is a list of programs available from third parties, developed by other groups, that you may find useful. We do not regularly use these programs at Iowa State, nor do we try very hard to keep this list of links up to date, so we cannot provide any support beyond the information that is given on this page.