CrystalMaker Suite for Northwestern Students, Staff, and Faculty

The Office for Research, McCormick School of Engineering, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and the Materials Science and Engineering Department have jointly licensed the CrystalMaker Suite for use by all students, staff and faculty at Northwestern University.

The suite includes CrystalMaker X, CrystalDiffract 6 and SingleCrystal 4 for Mac and Windows.

"CrystalMaker is the most-efficient way to visualize crystal and molecular structures. Its interactive design lets you "see the wood for the trees" and build your own visual understanding of complex materials. CrystalMaker transcends traditional crystallography software, letting you create dynamical visualizations with rotatable animations. Energy-modelling tools let you design and relax new structures, predict their vibrational properties, and explore how they interface with other materials."
http://www.crystalmaker.com/crystalmaker/

"CrystalDiffract brings the world of x-ray & neutron powder diffraction to your computer screen, with interactive control and easy characterization of your experimental data. Real-time parameter controls let you experiment with diffraction and sample settings, with instant feedback. Combine these with instant mixture creation - and the ability to load observed data in the same window - and you have a powerful workbench application for researchers, teachers and students."
http://www.crystalmaker.com/crystaldiffract/index.html

"From the classroom to the laboratory to the synchrotron: SingleCrystal is the easiest way to visualize and understand diffraction properties of crystals. SingleCrystal lets you simulate X-ray, neutron and electron diffraction patterns from single crystals, display reciprocal lattice sections and construct stereographic projections of planes or vectors. By combining a simulated pattern with an observed diffraction image, you can auto-index the pattern and determine the orientation of your crystal."
http://www.crystalmaker.com/singlecrystal/index.html

Download and Install

The accompanying licenses only work with the files you are about to download. Older versions of the software and demo versions downloaded from the CrystalMaker site will not work with the licenses issued to Northwestern! This license will expire on 8/31/2022

By downloading and installing the software you agree to the license terms. Download the license codes file and the installation files appropriate for your OS. Download link.

The crystal libraries that work with CrystalMaker are available here. http://www.crystalmaker.com/support/structures/index.html

Known Issues

Windows Users: Before you install ...

Please update your graphics drivers before installing CrystalMaker X for the first time, otherwise you may experience display issues.

Because graphics cards are supplied by third parties, you cannot rely on the Windows Software Update mechanism to do this - or your control panel. Instead, you should visit the graphics card manufacturer's website to download the latest drivers for your machine.

CrystalMaker X provides workstation-class performance through its highly-optimized multi-core design and advanced OpenGL support. As such, it is imperative that graphics drivers are kept fully up-to-date (particularly if your machine's operating system has been updated).

The vast majority of technical issues reported to us turn out to be related to bugs in graphics card drivers - and updating the driver software invariably fixes these as if by magic.
By default, the software is installed for the active user only. They will be prompted to enter an Admin password during the installation process.

Unless you are going to be using the software as the Admin User, do not log in as the Admin User to install the software; simply log in to your usual user account, and install the software for yourself.

Mac users: Graphics Tip...

CrystalMaker X is designed to work "out of the box" with any Mac running macOS 10.10 "Yosemite" or later.

Two graphics modes are provided: one, using the latest (for Mac) OpenGL 4.1 works with machines that have discrete graphics cards; the other, using OpenGL 3.2, is used for machines with Intel integrated graphics (most laptops) and is an option for other machines (e.g., older computers with graphics cards) if these prove to be incapable of handling the high-performance graphics rendering used in our software.

Use the Graphics pane of the Preferences panel (CrystalMaker > Preferences) to toggle "use latest graphics" on or off.

Designed for present and future systems. CrystalMaker X is a workstation-class application designed to offer superlative performance and breathtaking graphics on modern hardware. Please don't be disappointed if you try to run this state-of-the-art program on an old operating system or Mac: your system may not be able to do full justice to the power of the application.

Updated: 9-7-2021