Technical Documentation
The Force Parameter File: Atom Inclusion Groups

Atom Inclusion Groups are collections of Atom Inclusion Types that are used to define force-field terms for combinations of Atom Inclusion Types. (Groups are very similar to wildcards.) Atom Inclusion Groups are used only in the definition of force-field terms. Groups are expanded into their members and the expanded data is written to the output files. Atom Inclusion Groups do not exist outside the source file.

The Atom Inclusion Group record must appear only after the Atom Inclusion Type record has been defined. The format of the Atom Inclusion Group record is:

:ATOM-INCLUSION-GROUP

:Name1:Member1:Member2:...:

:Name2:Member1:Member2:...:

...

:END

The opening and closing keywords, like all keywords, begin with a colon and start on column one of their respective lines. The body of the data section may contain any number of lines. A line may be empty or may contain a list of names. The names are written between pairs of colons; the colons are not part of the names. Following the closing colon may be text to serve as comment. The comment must be separated from the name by white space, and may not contain colons.

The first name of each list is the name of the Atom Inclusion Group. This must not be the same as an existing Atom Inclusion Type. The other names that follow must be names of Atom Inclusion Types declared earlier; these are the members of the group. If a group contains too many members to be listed in a single line, start new lines beginning with the Group name and list more members in each line. It is an error to add a member to a Group more than once. Groups are independent of one another; an Atom Inclusion Type may belong to more than one Group. It is a good idea to give distinctive names to Groups so that they stand out from names of Types. For example, use brackets, parentheses, braces, angle brackets and so on.

Atom Inclusion Groups are of greatest use in torsions and improper torsions where data is available only for a limited number of combinations of Atom Inclusion Types. There may be a temptation to define a Group that encompass all Atom Inclusion Types and use it in defining proper and improper torsion parameters. This is not a good idea because each combination that arises from the expansion of the Group is added to the index table of the proper and improper torsion output files, and large Groups lead to even larger combinations. It is much better to define smaller Groups that are more specific. This has the added advantage that illogical connections will be caught.

Groups may be used in bond and angle terms but effort should be directed towards minimizing the number of Types in the first place.

When defining the parameters for a force field term, bear in mind that only the first definition for a particular grouping of Types is saved. Subsequent definitions for the same grouping are silently ignored. Thus, definitions that use Groups should be placed at the end of the list so that the generic definitions do not override the more specific definition.

Overview
Exclusion Types
Inclusion Types
Exclusion Soft Spheres
Exclusion van der Waals
Bonds
Angles
Improper Torsions
Distance NOE
Torsion Power Series
Exclusion Generalized LJ
Header
Check
Inclusion Groups
Inclusion Soft Spheres
Inclusion van der Waals
Torsions
Exclusion SwissCheese
Angle NOE
Inclusion Generalized LJ

Technical
Introduction
Directory
Vectors
Energy
Model
Assembly
Methods
FPF
FFF
AVF
TaroScript
YammpScript
Python
Utilities

Home
Information
News
User
Technical
Programmer
iYup
Download
Showcase
ETC