VMD

We recommend the use of VMD for visualizing your atomic trajectories. The software is available here from the developers - it is usually installed on Linux workstations and you can download a version for the Mac directly.

To open an xyz file, click “File”, “New Molecule”. Then click “Browse” and select your .xyz file. The click “Load”.

You will probably see nothing at first…click “Graphics”, then “Representations”. Change the drawing method to, for example, VDW (van der Waals radius) and you should see something. Use the mouse to change the view and you can also explore the many options in “Graphics” to change how it looks.

If you have more than one frame, then you can cycle through them as a movie with the main VMD box.