CrystalMaker 7 featured significant performance improvements, a new interface and many other features. The major changes are listed below.

What was New in CrystalMaker 7.2?

• Non-Destructive Bond Editing
  Major improvements have been made to the Edit > Bonding command, for crystal structures. Previous versions of the program regenerated the crystal structure, resulting in the loss of custom atom colouring, labelling or selections. Now, the existing structure is retained, allowing users to freely experiment with different bond settings.
  
  
• More Flexible Polyhedral Model Options
  The Polyhedral model type now allows more flexibility in the combination of model elements used. "Stick" and "ball-and-stick" styles can now be combined, with the program generating atom spheres or "ball-joint" atoms as required.
  
  
• User-Friendly CrystalMaker Text Export
  CrystalMaker Text files are now exported using special comments lines to explain the file syntax. Other improvements include the explicit listing of all general equivalent positions, and the removal of duplicate atom definitions from the TYPE card.
  
  
• Other Changes
  The Atom Info window includes various enhancements, including more intuitive editing of element settings, and a new contextual menu. The Window "Tile" and "Stack" commands have been improved, to preserve existing window ordering.

What was New in CrystalMaker 7.1?

• Universal Binary
  CrystalMaker 7.1 has been compiled as a single, "Universal Binary" application. This runs natively on both PowerPC- and Intel-based Macs. The program has been extensively tuned to provide seamless compatibility between the two platforms.
  
  
• Depth Profiling
  This new feature allows you to easily visualize the interior of a bulk material. You can profile the material's structure, by controlling the vertical extent of material to be shown at any time. Atoms "in front" of the slab can be hidden completely, or made translucent; atoms beneath the slab can be faded into the background.
  
  
• High-Resolution Graphics Formats
  You can export high-resolution graphics in a wide range of graphics formats. In addition to the old PICT format, CrystalMaker versions 7.1 and later now support high-resolution JPEG, PNG, BMP, TIFF, SGI and many more formats.


• Auto Update Checking
  If you are connected to the internet, you can now check for program updates without leaving CrystalMaker, thanks to a new Check for Update command on the Help menu. There is also the option of automatic update checking, at regular intervals.
  
  
• Usability Enhancements
  Many aspects of the program can now be customized. Perhaps most important, bond generation at text file import can now be enabled or disabled - useful if you work with very-large structures.
  
  

What was new in CrystalMaker 7.0?

• Thermal Ellipsoids
  Atomic displacement parameters ("thermal ellipsoids") can be displayed, in a wide range of display styles. The styles range from basic black-and-white "ORTEP" representations, through to photo-realistically rendered translucent ellipsoids. As with atom (sphere) styles, different ellipsoid styles can be assigned to different element types and/or different sites, using the Atoms pane of the Model Options window. The ellipsoid probability value can also be defined (the default value is currently set at 50% probability).
  
  Thermal ellipsoid data are automatically loaded from CIF, SHELX and CrystalMaker text file formats. Bij, Uij and Uiso values are supported.


• Massive Structures Visualization
  Unlimited (*) numbers of atoms, bonds, polyhedra and atom vectors. Even small structures benefit, thanks to the highly-efficient use of dynamical memory, resulting in less memory demands on your system - and faster program execution!


• Massive Polyhedral Geometries
  Unlimited(*) numbers of vertices and faces for any polyhedron (unlimited numbers of bonds per atom), allows you to visualize large coordination clusters, zeolite cages or channels.


• Custom-Defined Polyhedra
  The new Selection > Make Polyhedron command lets you define which atoms you want at the vertices of a polyhedron - with the option of generating symmetrically-equivalent sites. Great for visualizing non-radial distributions as "solid" polyhedra (e.g., a zeolite channel, rendered as a polyhedral "cylinder").


• Turbo Bonds Generation
  A new, high-speed algorithm provides orders of magnitude faster bond generation and site coordination searches.


• Easier Visualization of Molecular Crystals
  Newly developed and refined "Optimize Range" commands have been rewritten, allowing rapid viewing of molecular units within complex crystals.


• Keyboard Shortcuts for Toolbar Operations
  You can quickly switch from one tool to another without having to reach for the mouse; just type the keyboard shortcut for the appropriate tool (we've used many of the common Adobe Photoshop shortcuts here). Another great time saver is our new temporary rotation mode, which lets you rotate the structure with the mouse - with any tool active - simply by holding down the space key, then clicking and dragging with the mouse.



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• Combined "Atom" and "Polyhedral" Options. The Atoms and Polyhedra panes of the Model Options window have been merged into a single "Atoms" pane. A scrolling list is arranged hierarchically, by element and site - with the option of collapsing site rows by clicking the relevant element disclosure triangle.

  The list includes columns for sphere, ellipsoid and polyhedron styles. You can edit styles for all sites with the same element, by choosing a new style from the relevant Element row.

• New "Select" Commands. A new "Select" submenu has been added at the top of the "Selection" menu. The menu contains a new Select > Nearest Neighbours command, which allows you to select all atoms that are bonded directly to one or more existing selected atoms. You can repeat this command to build up an extended network of first-, second-, third-, etc. nearest neighbours.

  The "Select" menu also contains two other commands: Select > Entire Molecule and Select > Invert Selection. Note that the keyboard shortcut cmd-E now applies to the Select > Nearest Neighbours command; to choose the Select > Entire Molecule command, please use cmd-shift-E.

  (One other change that applies to the Selection menu is that the Hide > Others command has been renamed as Hide > Unselected Atoms, in order to make this less ambiguous.)

• Cross-Platform File Format. CrystalMaker 7.0 can read files generated by CrystalMaker for Windows 1.x, as well as Mac files written by all previous versions of CrystalMaker, back to version 2.0. Files are saved in a new, cross-platform format that can be read by CrystalMaker 1.x for Windows.

• Textbox Manipulation with the Annotation Tool. With the Annotation Tool active, you can edit and move a selected textbox. If the mouse pointer is moved over the edge of a selected textbox, it changes from an I-beam to an arrow; you can click-and-drag the textbox, to reposition it - without having to choose another tool.

• Improved Unit Cell Rendering. Unit cell edges are now rendered at higher-resolution, using dynamically-variable numbers of points.

• New Atom Vector Selection Command. A new Selection > Vectors > Select All command allows all visible atom vectors to be selected, so that they can easily be added en-masse (e.g., changing global colours/orientations).

• Global Show/Hide Labels Command. The Atom Info Window's Options menu now includes a Show/Hide Labels command, which serves to turn on or off all atom labels in the plotted structure.

• Auto-Generation of Site Colours. A new command on the Atom Info Window's Options menu allows automatic calculation of individual colours for all sites in a structure.

• More Flexible CrystalMaker Text Format. Sphere definitions can be included in CrystalMaker text files, without requiring colour records. One just needs to define the element symbol and the atomic radius.

• Option to Delete Crystal Sites. The Selection > Delete command is now enabled for crystals, allowing you to delete all atoms that are related by symmetry to any selected atoms.

• Improved Gridlines. Grids are now drawn in a more attractive way, using two scale levels, and automatic recalculation of gridsquare increments to optimize the display.

• Higher-Precision Output. Exported coordinates and Bonds files now use higher precision for atomic coordinates.

• Improved Contextual Menu. A new "Hide Other Molecules" command has been added to the Graphics Window's contextual menu.

• Updated Toolbar Icons. Toolbar icons are now anti-aliased and drawn at high resolution.

• New Preferences File Format. CrystalMaker preferences are now stored using a tagged file format, which provides additional flexibility - and the ability to add more tags in future versions (to store more detailed user settings), without disrupting existing settings.

• Help Files Optimized for Tiger. The CrystalMaker online help is optimized for use with Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger".

(*) Theoretical limit of 2 billion

What's new in CrystalMaker 8?