RasMol Scripts for Classroom Projection

RasMol "Movie" Scripts are obsolete! With one exception, all the movie scripts below have been ported to Chime. The Chime versions are listed in the World Index of BioMolecular Tutorials in Chime. The "movie" scripts below on DNA, hemoglobin, antibody, MHC, and lac repressor have all been ported to Chime and we urge you to use the newer format. Chime offers a much easier to use and more effective format for chemical structure presentations/tutorials.

The "movie" script on Lipid Bilayers and Membrane Channels is the only one which has not yet been ported to Chime (porting is planned). Several of the "movie" scripts below are avaliable in French. The French versions have not yet been ported to Chime.

If you have written a script of interest to others, contact emartz@microbio.umass.edu.
Your script can be linked to, or distributed from this site, provided it meets certain requirements.

MacIntosh? Windows? Unix? VMS? These scripts run on ALL PLATFORMS!

What is a "movie" script and how does it work? RasMol scripts cannot be viewed directly in your web browser. A script must first be downloaded to your computer. In order to run the script, you must have downloaded and installed RasMol version 2.6 (these scripts will not run on version 2.5, nor on UCB-RasMol!). Once you have downloaded and unpacked the script files, you simply type, for example, script dna3.top in RasMol's command window, and press Enter. Details on how to install and run each script for both Windows and Macintosh/PPC are in an html file, 00sptdoc.htm, which is included with each script.

If you are setting out to run a script for the first time, READ How to avoid the most common roadblock encountered by first-time RasMol script runners NOW!

Most scripts are available in two forms. One form has pauses (press any key to continue) and is good for illustrating a class lecture, or for downloading and self-paced study by students. The other form has no pauses (unpaused), so runs continuously, unattended. This form is good for projection at a meeting where people are moving around, or for an audience where the main issue is RasMol's script capability, rather than the scientific content of the script.

Each script is a group of plain text files containing RasMol commands, plus the PDB files (also plain text) for the molecules included in the script. The only script-specific commands are refresh and pause; all the other commands in scripts are ordinary RasMol commands. To understand how these scripts work, download one and examine the contents of the script files, and see the tutorials on script-creation.


Windows. These scripts are provided as self-unpacking DOS EXEcutable files. See BELOW for links to individual scripts. To install a script, download the EXE file, place it in an otherwise empty DOS directory, and run it (to unpack it). It will create a large number of files, including all needed PDB files and a documentation file with the same name as the script. More detailed instructions are in the documentation file accompanying each script.

MacIntosh. Thanks to Tom Manderfield of Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA USA, some the scripts have been re-packaged for MacIntosh users in the form of sea.hqx files. See BELOW for links to individual scripts. Scripts which have not been so-packaged can be gotten by ftp as unpackaged files (see below). Operating instructions are included in the documentation file accompanying each script.

Unix, VMS? If you can't use either of the above packing formats, you can ftp the unpackaged script files (see below). In the present versions, some load commands inadvertantly use upper case filenames; unix users will have to change these to lower case (fgrep for load in *.scr). This will be fixed as each script is updated (thanks to Christoph Weber).

Getting unpackaged script files. Typically, dozens of files make up the package for a 'single script'. Use anonymous ftp to marlin.bio.umass.edu in /pub/shareware/rasmol/scripts in ASCII mode (all files making up a script are plain text, either scripts themselves or PDB files). Pick the directory whose name signifies the script you want and get ALL files in that directory. In "old-fashioned" ftp, type "prompt" to toggle off a query for each file, then "mget *" to multiple-get all the files in the directory.


All scripts below require RasMol version 2.6 (They will NOT run on version 2.5, nor on UCB-RasMol)

Images from these scripts can be seen in the RasMol Gallery.

Scripts are available on the following topics:



This page is maintained by emartz@microbio.umass.edu