Examples of JSmol rendering artefacts

This page has been set up to illustrates structures available via CrystalWorks resident on the CDS/DL server which gave problems when rendered by JSmol.

A CrystalWorks structure which showed JSmol problems


Description of problem

The initial display shows four BF4 groups. Two have bonds with fluorines directly in front of the borons. The other two have the fluorines behind.

Until recently fluorines pointing directly out of the screen were not rendered correctly. They were invisible when using the "Sticks" option!

However, if you toggled perspective/non-perspective they appeared and disappeared. If you rotated the display even by a tiny amount (default XYRotate) they appeared. It was difficult to re-align the display to make them re-appear, but you could do this with the "Restore original setting" option. If you then rotated using the ZRotate option they remained invisible.

Correcting the problem

It turns out there has been a long standing bug in JMol/JSmol. We are grateful to Bob Hanson for quickly making the appropriate correction when the problem was pointed out to him.

The current version of CrystalWorks uses the corrected version of JSmol. However, you may need to clear the cache in your web browser to load this new version. You can check this out by examining the example strucure via the link below.


If you have any queries contact us via the email address at the foot of this page.