easiest way to change my 1 nm nanoparticle currently in sphere shape to a nanodisc&nanocube shape? any suggestions greatly appreciated. currently using manipulator tool any other tools i should be using?
I mean, you want to make new shapes. Do you want to preserve the number of atoms? Or do you want a disc and nanocube of particular sizes?
(It would also help to know what version of Avogadro you are using.)
preserve number of atoms and I am on version 1.2.0
Preserving the exact number of atoms will require math. You’re not going to get there using manual manipulation.
The best thing to create nanoparticle shapes is to create a supercell (i.e., replicating the unit cell) and then deleting atoms that go beyond a particular shape.
The math part is that you’ll need to work out the size of the particle / shapes based on the number of atoms you want to retain. So for example, you have a 1 nm nanoparticle (sphere). That came from a particular unit cell, which has a certain dimension and number of atoms. So you can work out the size of a nanocube based on simple replication.
Similar math will tell you an appropriate size of your nanodisk as a cylinder. Decide on a particular thickness (e.g., 1nm) and you can solve for the radius.
My suggestion would be to do that using a Python script (e.g., replicate the unit cell atoms, and ignore any that are beyond a particular size / distance / shape from the origin)