Update

Hi,

since i feel guilty for not yet having put comments/documentation, here’s a
quick update on what recently changed:

  • new class MolGeomInfo. It stores radius,center,normal vector and farthest
    atom of a molecule. It doesn’t auto-update, you have to call
    MolGeomInfo::compute(molecule) manually. No need to update everytime an atom
    moves, only at the end of molecule loading and after every subsequent atom
    creation/deletion (bonds don’t matter here).
  • class GLWidget now has a member d->molGeomInfo. It is updated by method
    GLWidget::updateGeomInfo().
  • class Molecule consequently shrinks and no longer has a d-pointer.
  • new class Camera. It has a 4x4 modelview matrix to pass to opengl, using
    Eigen to provide translation/rotation methods. It also stores the viewing
    angle (default 40°) and, more importantly, a pointer to the parent GLWidget.
    It uses it to call parent->molGeomInfo(), retrieving geometric info about the
    current molecule, and using it so automatically set up a nice viewpoint
    (Camera::initializeViewPoint()) and apply a nice OpenGL perspective
    projection (Camera::applyPerspective()). This solves the classical issue when
    an object would get clipped when it’s too close or too far from the camera.
  • Feature from Kalzium: automatic double-bonds orientation. Engine::render now
    takes a reference to a MolGeomInfo. It uses it to draw multiple bonds in such
    a way that from the default viewpoint, they don’t look like single bonds.
    Thus Cylinder::draw now takes an additional argument, planeNormalVector.
  • Draw::moveAtom now lets the atom move in the plan that’s parallel to the
    screen and passing through the molecule center. If you want to move in
    another plane, just rotate the view. Formerly, the plane of movement was
    arbitrary and thus unintuitive for the user.

The issues with empty molecules (impossible to create atoms, etc) are solved.

I hope to document that ASAP.

Cheers,
Benoit