Although we have been carrying out detailed molecular simulation for several years now, and have used plastic molecular models to test and explore ideas, we have never had any convenient way to convert between plastic data and computer data. We are nearing the completion of a small project that allows scientists to present ideas in a plastic model and directly scan such models into a computer using several photographs. The Apple Macintosh II computer is a base for this project due to the availability and ease of connection of peripherals, such as high quality scanners and high resolution frame grabbers (direct scanning camera), to this machine. This software tool should allow researchers to obtain three dimensional coordinates from stereo pictures in published journal articles or other sources. In the future, this tool will be augmented to allow the use of a color frame grabber and we will add a zoom feature so that large complex structures can be processed with precision.
