Subsections

 
4.3 Usage

 
4.3.1 Command Line Interface

Executing molcharge with no arguments will result in:

prompt> molcharge

No argument specified on the command line
Required parameters:
    -in : Input filename
    -out : Output filename
For more help type:
  molcharge --help'

For a complete listing of parameters, use the argument ``-help all''

 
4.3.1.1 Command-Line Options

Molcharge has several flags that are used to determine which type of partial charges to utilize. In addition, there is a single flag to control whether structural optimization should be carried out for models which use an AM1 calculation.

-am1
Assign AM1 partial charges to each atom.

-am1bcc
Assign AM1-BCC partial charges to each atom.

-clear,-none
Set the partial charges to zero.

-formal
Set the partial charges of each atom to it's formal charge. Unlike the -none command line option, this at least preserves the net charge on the molecule.

-gasteiger
Assign Marsili-Gasteiger partial charges to each atom.

-in
This is the input file. This file can contain molecules in a wide-variety of molecular formats. For further details please see the chapter discussing them below. Some of the partial charging models, such as AM1 and AM1BCC require coordinates in order to calculate charges. While the input file is required, the ``-in'' flag is optional. If no ``-in'' flag is specified, the first unflagged parameter is used as the input file.

-initial
Set the charges to the Gasteiger seed charges.

-mmff
Assign MMFF94 partial charges to each atom.

-noh
Specified a united-atom charge model. First, charges are calculated with explicit hydrogens. Then, each explicit hydrogen is converted to an implicit hydrogen and it's partial charge is added to the partial charge of it's parent heavy-atom.

-opls
Assign OPLS partial charges to recognized protein atoms. Atoms that don't have a residue name and atom name matching a dictionary entry are assigned the value zero.

-out
This is the output file and it is a required parameter. Since this object of molcharge is to generate partial charges, it will only write to formats that can specify a partial charge. These formats currently include only .mol2, .mol2H and .oeb. For further information on molecular formats please see the chapter discussing them below. While the output file is required, the ``-out'' flag is optional. If no ``-out'' flag is specified, the second unflagged parameter is used as the output file.

-param
This can be used to name an input parameter file of molcharge settings, especially useful for running the program with similar flags as a previous run. Flags coming after -param override parameters set by the parameter file.

-paramfile
The filename for the output parameter file can be set with this flag.

-prefix
Similar to -paramfile, the parameter file will be written to what follows this flag plus the extension `.param'.

-singlePoint
Do not optimize the coordinates under the AM1 potential before calculating the charges. [default = optimize]

 
4.3.2 Example executions

An example run of the molcharge program is given below.

prompt> molcharge drugs.sdf drugs.mol2

This executes molcharge with the default parameters, to sprout explicit hydrogens and assign MMFF94 partial charges. The file drugs.sdf is opened in SD format for input, and the output is written to the file drugs.mol2 in Sybyl .mol2 format.