WHAT IS PLUTON AND HOW TO GET STARTED


PLATON HOMEPAGE

PLUTON

The previously available standalone molecular graphics program PLUTON (by A.L.S), a decendent of the well known PLUTO (Motherwell & Clegg) program from around 1978, is now available only as a build-in option within the PLATON suite. The original PLUTON is now obsolete and no longer supported & maintained as a stand-alone program.

There are six ways to run the PLUTON option within PLATON.

The first three provide a direct path to PLUTON, the last three an indirect path.

  1. With the '-p' option on the command line

    Example: platon -p sucrose.spf

  2. With a 'softlink' of 'pluton' to the 'platon' executable:

    i.e. ln -s platon pluton

    sothat PLUTON can be invoked as usual: pluton sucrose.spf

  3. Clicking on 'toPluton' in the PLATON menu on the right side.

  4. The PLATON keyboard instruction 'PLUTON'

  5. Clicking in the main PLATON-MENU on the button PLUTONauto will result in a PLATON-run to generate an input file for PLUTON to make both consistent.

  6. Clicking on PLUTON-ELD in the ORTEP-menu.


PLUTON can be run in the (old) 'Menu-Off' mode by invoking PLATON with two switches:

Example: platon -o -p sucrose.spf


SHORT INTRO TO PLUTON

(This is the 'direct path' version assuming Tektronix emulation; the X-windows mode runs slightly different)

PLUTON is a program for interactive molecular graphics. It is designed for use in a crystallographic context. However, it can be used for the display and analyses of molecules in an orthogonal (Angstrom) coordinate system as well.

Method of use: