Blog - The Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC)

3D Printing: Easy as 1, 2, 3!

Peter Wood – Wed, 19 Aug 2015 23:00:00 GMT

You may have noticed from our Facebook page that one of the great talking points at our booths at the recent ACA and ACS conferences was just how useful 3D printing has become. It has certainly created a stir in the CSD user community. Creating an experimentally accurate 3D printed molecule of any part of your crystal structure is now easy with the latest version of CSD-System (Mercury). To illustrate just how straightforward 3D printing from Mercury is – I recently used the following steps to produce a model of one of my own structures. Here’s how…

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Discovering what’s in a name at the CCDC

Suzanna Ward – Tue, 11 Aug 2015 23:00:00 GMT

A guest blog by Thom, one of CCDC’s co-funded summer students

This summer I decided to enhance (and help fund!) my Chemistry degree in Edinburgh by entering the world of crystallography for a few months, including a week’s visit to the home of the CSD in Cambridge.

My week of experience at the CCDC has opened my eyes to the tireless work and expertise which maintains and develops such an immense, and impressive, catalogue of data. The CCDC is truly a machine: its gears turning under the constant flow of deposits, while its developers work to refine the already sophisticated editorial process through the production and utilisation of immaculate pieces of software.

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