Software Review

SOFTWARE REVIEW

Space Groups for Windows

According to the sales brochure, 'Space Groups for Windows' is user-friendly PC software designed for scientists, educators, and students in the fields of Crystallography, solid state physics, solid state chemistry and material sciences.

Symmetry arguments not only greatly simplify calculations of a wide variety of physical properties of solids such as structural, magnetic, electrical and optical etc., but also often give a detailed insight into these properties. It has therefore become increasingly important amongst research workers to carry out a symmetry analysis besides carrying out any experiment.

Space Groups Program Features

With easy windows dialogs, featuring drop-down boxes, sliders and buttons, the following tasks can be obtained for each of the 230 space groups listed in the International Tables for crystallography:

General and special position tables and their three-dimensional graphic representations.
Symmetry elements and their three-dimensional representation.
Crystal builder: Build crystals while interacting with position and symmetry tables
Interactive dialog box to determine distances and angles among atoms.
Miller planes
Atomic colour and radius editors.

Given the above main features of the Space Group Program and as it is often very difficult to describe and visualize the symmetry operations, this program can be regarded as an excellent teaching tool for new crystallographers and solid state physicists. This can save a long time reading through the text books and a lot of tedious imagination which is often required to understand the symmetry operations.

Output Devices: The program supports most of the printers available on Windows. It can also create a variety of files such as Bitmaps which can be imported by most of the word processing software including WordPerfect. Hardware and System Requirements: Microsoft Windows version 3.0 or higher. 386 PC or higher with 4MB RAM minimum. No extended/expanded memory is needed.

Supplier: Atomic Softek, 201 Jackson St. W. Suite 604, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, L8P 1M2 cost US $ 299 + postage and handling fee . Academic discounts may be available. email: [email protected]

Hassan Al-Kanani,Physics Department,University of Salford, July 95

Editors Note: An improved demo version should be available shortly. The supplier has kindly agreed that we can mount it on the World Wide Web for easier access by BCA Members.
<-- Click here to return to BCA homepage