FieldView is Cresset's popular molecular Viewer and Editor. It is available as a free download through the Cresset Website. This guide provides an introduction to using the viewer portion of the software.

1. FieldView Guide Part 1: Using the Viewer
Martin Slater

2. Field view basics
> Field view is essentially a 3D molecular viewer with the
capability of generating Cresset’s electrostatic and shape
fields for standard molecules files eg SDF, mol2 etc
> Any data in the original file can be viewed and sorted in a
standard table format
> Molecules can also be entered manually, from 2D files,
molecule drawings or using our internal molecule editor to
create them
> It has a simple minimisation tool allowing viewing reasonable
conformations derived from the original 2D input
> Various 3D field displays are available with molecules editable
showing ‘on-the-fly’ changes in the field visualizations

3. Tips and tricks
1. Install and double click the Fieldview icon to open an empty file.
2. To get started simply load molecules using the ‘Add Molecule’ icon in the menu or click
‘File: Add Molecule’ and browse to add an appropriate file (.sdf, .sd, .mol .mol2 etc),
which will then appear in both 2D and 3D format. Alternatively click ‘Edit: Paste’ to paste
molecules from clipboard (eg .using copy paste from Chemdraw or Accelrys Discovery
Studio)
3. If you try moving the mouse onto the 3d window (Right hand screen), the bottom left
panel tells you which mouse clicks will move the molecule in the 3D viewer
4. You can scroll through the 2D molecule window pane (Left hand screen) by left clicking
and dragging from the divider or by using the bottom scrolling slider to view molecule
data. Right clicking allows some edit functionality in this data (eg. copy, rename etc).
5. Molecules can be selected by left clicking on the 2D panel. In the menu: ‘selected
molecules’ indicates that display options apply to the currently selected molecule .
Display settings can be toggled by clicking icons in the top menu bar. Display settings
can also be toggled to apply to all molecules using this dropdown option. Fieldpoints
(4-types) can be toggled on and off independently.

4. Tips and tricks
6. To view electrostatic surfaces, first change the number in the top menu bar to 3.0, and
then click the icons to toggle surfaces – reducing the number increases the size of the
field surface . Ensure you toggle the surface view before changing this number. Yellow
surface fields usually require a smaller number (2.00) relative to the electrostatics (3.00-
4.00) for a good view.
7. To make multiple selections, hold shift before selecting from the 2D panel - this is
particularly good if you make a copy of a compound and apply different visualizations to
each - and visualize by toggling the grid icon (Right hand) panel. Hover the mouse over
this panel to display the icon name. Hitting the ‘Delete’ key will delete all the selected
molecules.
8. To filter, use the right hand panel, which holds all of the available the filters. Choose any
data column from the dropdown menu to apply filters using the sliders which appear upon
column selection.
9. To view protein-ligand complexes, remove a ligand (save as a mol2 file) from a PDB file
(Discovery Studio / Pymol) and save the empty protein as a mol2 file. Use the ‘Add
Molecule’ icon to add the empty protein file, left click the protein and assign as protein.
You can then use the protein button (Right hand panel) to toggle on/off. The protein will
appear in the top dropdown menu as a selectable object. Load the ligand as above and
visualize fields in the context of the protein.
10. You can Export compounds as sdf, mol file etc using ‘File: Export’, or save the session as
a Fieldview file (.fvp) using ‘File: Save Project’.

5. More information
> Still have questions about FieldView? Contact us
at support@cresset-group.com and we will be
happy to help.
> Part 2 of this Guide will provide instruction on how
to use the editing features of FieldView, and will
be available November 2011.
> FieldView is available as a free download. See
http://www.cresset-group.com/products/fieldview/
for more details.