The APBS electrostatic potential grid file format (suffix .dx) is from IBM's Visualization Data Explorer and also used by an open source program based on that software called OpenDX.  It is documented in the APBS manual here:

    http://www.poissonboltzmann.org/file-formats/mesh-and-data-formats/opendx-scalar-data

  Tom

Begin forwarded message:

From: Nikolay Igorovich Rodionov
Date: May 21, 2012 12:43:34 PM PDT
To: Eric Pettersen
Subject: RE: [Chimera-users] ESP calculations

Thank you both,

Can either of you tell me how the information in a volume data set is organized? I am looking at a .dx file that I created using APBS which I would assume to be very similar to the volumetric data sets created by Chimera. What does each column of data represent? Is there any way for me to sort the ESP data based on position using Excel or Matlab? I am only concerned with ESP data for one region of molecule.  If you could point me in the direction of some good documentation on this file type it would be great.

I don't know, so I'm forwarding this out to chimera-users land, where someone might have an answer...

--Eric


Thanks again,
Nikolay Rodionov

-----Original Message-----
From: Eric Pettersen
Sent: Monday, May 21, 2012 2:57 PM
To: chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu BB
Cc: Nikolay Igorovich Rodionov
Subject: Re: [Chimera-users] ESP calculations

Also, if you compute a volume, you can use the "Values at Atom Positions" tool to, um, get the values at atom positions (say, a ligand), if that's relevant to what you're doing.

--Eric

On May 21, 2012, at 9:09 AM, Elaine Meng wrote:

Hi Nikolay,
You can generate a grid of values with the "Compute grid" option of
Coulombic Surface Coloring (or corresponding option of the "coulombic"
command).  The grid is a volume data set, and when it is generated the
Volume Viewer  and Surface Color dialogs will automatically appear.

<http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/ContributedSoftware/coulombic/co
ulombic.html

<http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/ContributedSoftware/coulombic/co
ulombic.html#volume


You can save the grid to a file with the FIle menu of Volume Viewer.
<http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/ContributedSoftware/volumeviewer
/framevolumeviewer.html


As for the values at each point of the surface, I don't know of a way
to write these all to a file, but in Surface Color if you click the
Options button and then turn on the option to "Report value at mouse
position" it will report the values in the status line at the bottom
of the Chimera window when you click into the graphics window and then
mouse over the surface. I just noticed that to make this work it is
necessary to recolor the surface first by clicking the Color button on
this dialog, which may be a bug, but that's the workaround!
<http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/ContributedSoftware/surfcolor/su
rfcolor.html


If you have the grid file saved you can reopen it in Chimera later and
use it in Surface Color without rerunning the ESP calculation.

However, keep in mind that Coulombic ESP is more for qualitative
purposes of visualization or making comparisons between related
structures than for absolute quantitative accuracy.  For example, you
could easily make all the ESP values half as large simply by doubling
the dielectric constant used in their calculation, as shown in the
equation in the Coulombic Surface Coloring manual page.

I hope this helps,
Elaine
----------
Elaine C. Meng, Ph.D.
UCSF Computer Graphics Lab (Chimera team) and Babbitt Lab Department
of Pharmaceutical Chemistry University of California, San Francisco

On May 21, 2012, at 8:05 AM, Nikolay Igorovich Rodionov wrote:

Hi all,
I was wondering if there was a way to get an output data file
regarding ESP coloring and calculations based on Coulomb's law. The
visualization is great but I would also like to quantify the data.
Thank you,
Nikolay Rodionov


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