https://github.com/philipturner/molecular-renderer

CAD program for molecular nanotechnology
https://github.com/philipturner/molecular-renderer

Last synced: about 2 months ago
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CAD program for molecular nanotechnology

• Host: GitHub
• URL: https://github.com/philipturner/molecular-renderer
• Owner: philipturner
• License: mit
• Created: 2023-02-15T02:12:10.000Z (almost 2 years ago)
• Default Branch: main
• Last Pushed: 2024-04-13T21:36:51.000Z (8 months ago)
• Last Synced: 2024-04-13T23:10:35.506Z (8 months ago)
• Language: Swift
• Homepage:
• Size: 13.1 MB
• Stars: 59
• Watchers: 5
• Forks: 6
• Open Issues: 3
• Metadata Files:
  • Readme: README.md
  • License: LICENSE

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README

        

![image](https://github.com/philipturner/molecular-renderer/assets/71743241/d5585c84-7e4e-4507-841a-452fb68615d3)

# Molecular Renderer

Molecular Renderer is a minimal renderer for molecular nanotechnology. It does not have UI features like buttons and dropdowns; instead, the user codes the structures and trajectories to render. This design provides more flexibility and reduces the complexity to code a CAD program.

## Overview

Until 2024, NanoEngineer was the most capable platform for designing molecular nanotechnology. It had an interactive UI, but also simulators that ran slowly at >5000 atoms. This restricted the design to colorful strained shell structures [in order to minimize atom count](http://www.imm.org/research/parts/controller). Several projects sought to improve on this aspect—the difficulty performing iterative design on nanomachines.

The most well-funded projects (Atomic Machines, CBN Nano Technologies) are closed-source. As a result, aspiring engineers had to rely on the 15-year old NanoEngineer. The successor needed to follow a more modern [approach](https://github.com/atomCAD/atomCAD/wiki) than close-sourcing:

> ...for a molecular nanotechnology industry to exist, there must be such a society of engineers that transcends any single company, and a public body of knowledge capturing best practices for nano-mechanical engineering design. Other companies are training engineers on in-house tools where they create designs never to be seen by the outside world. We believe strongly that needs to change...

Out of all the [ongoing efforts](https://astera.org/molecular-systems) to succeed NanoEngineer, Molecular Renderer was the first to reach [million-atom scale](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC34BQt2ODM). It was built from the ground up to enable engineering of massive systems. The scale of general-purpose computers, replicating machines, and medical nanobots.

## Installation

Working on porting the renderer to Windows. Will add usage instructions when it is finished.