The Space Group Visualizer

A new free interactive OpenGL software tool is demonstrated, that visualizes all monoclinic, and so far part of the orthorhombic, triclinic and hexagonal space group symmetries. The software computes with Clifford (geometric) algebra. The space group visualizer originated as a script for the open source visual CLUCalc, which fully supports geometric algebra computation. This paper briefly describes the historical and scientific developments leading to the space group visualizer project. Then we step by step demonstrate space group selection and the powerful set of interactive tools, including continuous free interactive 3D rotations, repositioning and resizing of the crystal domain in view. The most prominent feature of the space group visualizer is the full visualization of all spatial symmetries of a crystal domain. Beyond this the user can reduce the view to single symmetry operations or to certain classes of symmetries.