QMVIEW - A COMPUTATIONAL CHEMISTRY 3-DIMENSIONAL VISUALIZATION TOOL AT THE INTERFACE BETWEEN MOLECULES AND MANKIND

QMView is designed to facilitate the visualization and interpretation of quantum mechanical data. Capabilities include display of chemical s tructure, animation of quantum mechanically determined vibrational mod es, and depiction of electronic properties and three-dimensional molec ular orbitals. QMView has a user-friendly interface that allows users to interactively manipulate many features of the molecular structure a nd/or property, including positioning and structure representation, vi a mouse-activated dialog boxes. Although the interface allows input fr om results of any of the popularly used quantum mechanical software, w e have focused on GAMESS,(1,2) a widely distributed quantum chemistry code. QMView has been designed with the special feature of working in distributed mode with GAMESS, the latter running on a supercomputer, t he former running on a Silicon Graphics platform. Ancillary programs p rovide a method of obtaining output of graphic images in various media , including hardcopy, PostScript files, slide, and/or video. These and other original features discussed in this article provide a graphic i nterface that is unique compared to others that are currently availabl e. Examples of images produced by QMView are presented.