Please note that we have not tested most of these programs ourselves, and do not endorse them.
Codes that work directly with GAMESS.
- MOLDEN - a nice X-windows/Unix or Windows program written by Gijs Schaftenaar at the University of Nijmegen. It displays orbitals, structures, electrostatic potentials etc. by reading from GAMESS log files, and has a Z-matrix builder. This program is described in a journal article, G.Schaftenaar and J.H. Noordik. J. Computer-Aided Mol. Design 14, 123-134 (2000).
- Facio - Facio is a Windows molecular modelling software written by Masahiko Suenaga at Kyushu University, which can also run on Intel CPU–based Linux and Macintosh. Facio can prepare GAMESS input, execute calculations, and then visualize the results in a GUI. OpenGL is used for the graphics, which consist of isovalue surfaces for MOs, total density and electrostatic potentials, and options to display IR/Raman spectra and normal modes. Facio is well suited for handling large systems, such as proteins and DNA, and it can make GAMESS input files for the FMO method. By installing Tinker, one can perform geometry optimizations using force fields.
- WebMO - is a free web-based interface to GAMESS and other computational chemistry programs. WebMO permits users to build 3-D molecular structures, submit multiple jobs, monitor job progress, and view text and graphical results all from within a standard web-browser (no specialized software or plug-ins). The WebMO homepage has a complete WebMO feature list, system requirements, screen shots, a working demo, installation and upgrade instructions, examples, and download information.
- Gabedit - is a free graphical user interface to GAMESS and other computational chemistry programs. Gabedit can prepare GAMESS input, execute calculations, and then visualize the results in a GUI. It is work under Linux, Windows and Mac OSX11.
- GDIS is a freely available chemical visualisation program for displaying molecules, periodic structures and crystal morphologies. The program has a graphical interface for constructing input files for GAMESS as well as analysing the results from GAMESS calculations. It is based on the GTK toolkit and runs on both Linux and Mac OS X systems.
- Molecular Modeling and Simulation Kit (MaSK) is useful in the visualization of various molecular properties calculated by GAMESS. The goal in building this program was to make it as simple as possible for a beginner or student to use yet full of features to satisfy most researchers who need to visualize various calculated properties and create inputs for new jobs.
- JMolEditor is a cross-platform Java program for displaying, analyzing, editing, and converting molecular systems. It has intuitive interface and in- built help system. It can parse both input and output GAMESS files.
- ChemCraft is a Windows program created by Grigoriy Zhurko at Ivanova State University of Chemistry and Technology (Russia). The program displays structures, orbitals, vibrational modes, bond analysis etc. as taken from GAMESS output files. There are also features for building molecules.
- QMolView - by Costel Agache from the Department of Wood Chemistry at the Transylvania University of Brasov in Romania. This program runs on various Windows PC systems, and is available in a 'try before you buy' option.
- Visual Molecular Dynamics (VMD) is a molecular visualization program for displaying, animating, and analyzing large biomolecular systems using 3-D graphics and built-in scripting. VMD supports computers running MacOS-X, Unix, or Windows, is distributed free of charge, and includes source code.
- ScientificGL is a Windows 95/98/NT program available in C source code as well as binary, and includes molecular surfaces such as the Spackman and Conelly surfaces used for atomic charge computation. Also available for Windows 95/98/NT with expanded features described in the following page: Visualize.
- MOLEKEL: Advanced Interactive 3D-Graphics for Molecular Sciences, by Peter F. Flukiger; Revision 3.04 by Stefan Portmann. Developed at University of Geneva and CSCS/SCSC-ETHZ. MOLEKEL is entirely written in ANSI-C and uses the Graphics Library (GL) of Silicon Graphics for both rendering and the graphical user interface. It runs on any SGI workstation running IRIX 6.x. The MOLEKEL binary can be downloaded free of charge after registration. The source code is not available.
- Pcmodel can read and write GAMESS files and can run GAMESS directly on Linux. The latest version is 8.5 and runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Orbdraw can be used to visualize molecular orbitals and densities, and Vibrate is capable of animating normal vibrational modes.
- ViewMol3D - a Windows 95/98/NT OpenGL program, created by Andrew Ryzhkov and Arcady Antipin at the Institute of Organic Chemistry URC RAS. It can display 3D molecule models from GAMESS OUT-files.
Codes for converting between file formats
- Babel Open Babel is a project designed to pick up where Babel left off, as a cross-platform program and library designed to interconvert between many file formats used in molecular modeling and computational chemistry.
Graphics codes that require some file manipulation by hand or with Babel to work with GAMESS (some just draw pictures, so they don't work directly with GAMESS at all).
- Chemscape Chime Chime is a browser plug-in that renders 2D and 3D molecules directly within a Web page. The molecules are "live", meaning they are not just static pictures, but chemical structures that scientists can rotate, reformat, and save in various file formats for use in modeling or database applications.
- Cn3D (Read as See in 3D) is a free viewer from the National Center for Biotechnology Information. It uses PDB files converted to the ASN.1 format available thru WWW Entrez.
- CS ChemOffice Net is a Macintosh and Windows suite (free to nonprofit and educational users) that will allow you to view the chemical structures and molecular models available at the ChemFinder WebServer and at other sites on the Net. CS ChemOffice Net 3.1 contains a subset of the features of the commercially availible CS ChemOffice Pro 3.1. To create your own models you would need to purchase the full version.
- Flex is a simple, portable molecular graphics program that interactively displays 3D ball-and-stick models using Xwindows. Flex is capable of animating sequences of PDB data.
- Garlic, "Free molecular visualization program, protein structure, DNA structure, PDB, molecular rendering, biological macromolecule, unix, linux, free software download, open source software, unofficial release, Damir Zucic."
- gOpenMol With gOpenMol small molecules, and to lesser extent protein structures, as well as the chemical properties, total electron densities and molecule orbitals of small molecules can be visualized and analyzed.
- Gnuplot is a command-line driven interactive plotting utility for UNIX, MSDOS, and VMS platforms (Macintosh port is availible). It is a graphical program which allows scientists to visualize mathematical functions and data. 3-D surfaces can be plotted as a mesh fitting the specified function, or as a contour plot on the x-y plane. For 2-d plots, there are also many plot styles. Many use this for viewing potential energy surfaces.
- info-mac science archive of files and applications for the Macintosh.
- ISIS/Draw is a chemical drawing package that is free for educational use and personal use at home. It's availible for both windows and the Macintosh. ISIS/Draw supports MOL, TGF, and RXN formats.
- Moledit Create and edit input files on an IBM PC, would require a little work or babel to convert to the GAMESS $DATA format.
- MOLMOL is a free graphics program for manipulating biological macromolecules, with emphasis on protein or DNA structures determined by NMR. It runs on UNIX and Windows NT/95.
- MovieMol makes ball-and-stick animations of molecular structures, and runs on PC-DOS, IBM RS/6000, and SGI workstations. It is free to academic researchers.
- Pro3D is a program developed for molecular modeling, analyzing, modifying and visualizing 3-dimensional protein structure. Current version can read all PDB.ENT file format.
- RasMol A Macintosh/Unix/Windows program for viewing molecules.