I am trying to add a new particle type that is not available in the default particle types in Ovito. According to the documentation in the Settings tab, the configuration file ~/.config/Ovito.conf needs to be modified. However, after checking the file, I was unable to figure out the corresponding section to modify and the specific changes to make.
Could you kindly guide me on how to add a new particle type?
By the way, I am using a relatively old version of Ovito (2.9.0 or 3.1.2) on Ubuntu, and I hope the method to modify the config file is the same.
New particle types can only be created in the GUI, not by editing the .conf file. The file is not really human-readable, like you noticed.
In Ovito 2.9, you define a new type via the “Set as default” button, which is shown in the screenshot. After using the button, the new type will show up in the list in the application settings dialog.
I outputted the element in the LAMMPS dump file with the keywords id type element x y z. For OVITO version 2.9.0. I’ve found that for the predefined elements, OVITO handles the mapping well. However, when the element used in LAMMPS dump file is not defined by default, it assigns a ‘Type 1’ particle type. Even if a new particle type is defined in the GUI, sometimes it still may confuse.
It seems the best situation is that in column mapping, type is mapped to Particle Type and the elements in the dump are already defined by default.
Maybe the best practice with OVITO is not to output element in the LAMMPS dump file? In later versions like 3.1.2, fields are available for the user to define the name for a certain particle type.
I was wondering if you might consider adding more elements to the default particle types in OVITO.
Only newer program versions have the ability to correctly load dump files that contain both a “type” and an “element” column. You cannot expect this from OVITO 2.9.
In this old program version, you should be able to predefine particle types named “Type 1”, “Type 2”, etc. to give prescribed colors and radii to the numerical atom types from a LAMMPS dump file.
I am sorry if I have not fully understood your problem. We can no longer provide support for OVITO 2.9. This program version is over 7 years old and almost everything has changed in the meantime. To be honest, you should no longer be using this version.
I am sorry I have not yet updated my OS from Ubuntu 18.04 to a newer one. I tried using the latest version of OVITO, but I encountered some issues with the library files. Once I update my Ubuntu system, I will try the latest version of OVITO again. The most recent version I used was 3.1.2, which is from about four years ago.
I apologize for seeking support for an older version. I understand that the best practice is to migrate to the latest version.
