Floppy-box Monte Carlo (FBMC) is a simulation method for obtaining the crystal structure of atomic or colloidal particles.
This code implements the algorithm described in (https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/259898) to convex hard particles.
## Building ##
Linux:
Linux:
0. CMake version 2.8.12+ is required. To get CMake on Ubuntu, simply type `sudo apt install cmake`.
1. Go to the FBMC directory. You should see the folders 'src' and 'obj'. Go to the folder 'bin' or create it if it does not yet exist.
1. Compile the Voro++ libraries: go to [FBMC_DIR]/external/voro++-0.4.6/ and type `make install`.
1. Go to the main FBMC directory. You should see the folders 'src' and 'obj'. Go to the folder 'bin' or create it if it does not yet exist.
2. In FBMC/bin, run the commands `cmake ..` and `make`. Depending on which compiler / compiler version you have you may get warnings or errors. These should be harmless, but you can bug me about them if you wish.
3. If compilation was succesful, an executable named 'fbmc' should be in /FBMC/bin/. Now you can try the code!
## Usage ##
This code calculates the crystal structure of any convex(!) (sphero)polyhedron. To do this, it needs to know only two things: the shape to simulate, and how many particles per unit cell to try. To run a FBMC simulation, use `/wherever_you_placed_it/FBMC/bin/fbmc -N [#PARTICLES PER UNIT CELL] -s [.OBJ FILE PATH]`.
This code calculates the crystal structure of any convex(!) (sphero)polyhedron. To do this, it needs to know only two things: the shape to simulate, and how many particles per unit cell to try. To run a FBMC simulation, use `/wherever_you_placed_it/FBMC/bin/fbmc -N [#PARTICLES PER UNIT CELL] -s [.OBJ FILE PATH]`.
You can provide the shape you want to simulate as a .obj file. [Wavefront .obj](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wavefront_.obj_file) is a basic text file format for 3D mesh data. Many tools that can do something with 3D meshes (e.g. Mathematica) can output them in the .obj format. A few shapes are included in the 'obj' folder that you can use to test.
You can provide the shape you want to simulate as a .obj file. [Wavefront .obj](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wavefront_.obj_file) is a basic text file format for 3D mesh data. Many tools that can do something with 3D meshes (e.g. Mathematica) can output them in the .obj format. A few shapes are included in the 'obj' folder that you can use to test.
For the moment you can only provide .obj files where each face has 3 vertices. This is by far the most common convention, but occasionally faces with more vertices will be used (e.g. Mathematica's cube). If you really need support for more vertices per face, please contact me.
