WHAT IF

Welcome to the WHAT IF homepage. [WHAT IF] is a versatile molecular modelling package that is specialized on working with proteins and the molecules in their environment like water, ligands, nucleic acids, etc.

WHAT IF has been designed and written over a long period of time. It started on Dec 6 1987 in Groningen, continued from 1989-2000 at the EMBL in Heidelberg, from 2000-2006 at the CMBI of the Radboud University Nijmegen, and in 2006 it moved with the CMBI to the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre (RUMC).

WHAT IF was created to do my science, and distribution was an afterthought. So, be happy that you can get the software, but be aware that distribution takes time, and is not pleasant work. So we distribute only a few times per year. Emails about distribution are principally not answered.

The money raised by selling WHAT IF goes to the WHAT IF foundation. This foundation pays the coffee in the lab, and pays people who help me with parts of the code that are outside my field of expertise.

If you use WHAT IF, please refer to:
WHAT IF: A molecular modeling and drug design program.
G.Vriend, J. Mol. Graph. (1990) 8, 52-56.

A screendump of the OpenGL version of WHAT IF. One of the large new things in WHAT IF 6.0 was the introduction of a few fancy graphics options, like these solid spheres.

What's new in WHAT IF 8.0?

WHAT IF 8.0 comes with a series of new things:

• The interface to GRID has been revamped
• WHAT IF now 'understands' most ligands, including their topology and hydrogen bonding
• An interface to GROMACS
• Runs also on 64 bit machines
• Many new structure validation options
• A HREF="http://www.yasara.com/products.htm#twinset">TwinSet support
• and a whole lot more...

And what will be new in version 9.0?

WHAT IF 9.0 is planned for late 2011. It will come with a series of new things:

• Many new structure validation options
• It will be compilable with the new gfortran compiler
• We will revive the old X11 graphics because it supports many fullscreen stereo devices such as, for example, the new Zalman screens.
• Pictures in the writeup
• The content management system that we use(d) to make the pages you are now looking at

Theory behind options

In the theory section you will find a small start of the theory behind WHAT IF options. Please do not expect too much yet. It is a lot of work, and comes with little glory...

WARNING

WHAT IF is meant to run on LINUX systems. An old SGI version is available, but on SGIs we only support the X11 based graphics. Probably, WHAT IF will run on a whole series of other computers, but we have no means to be sure about the performance (if any) on SUN, IBM, HP, etc. It ran on all those machines in the past, but that is all we can say now... Full-screen stereo is only supported on Linux machines, while side-by-side stereo is supported on all machines. I.e. if you manage to compile WHAT IF on SUN, HP, etc., then side-by-side stereo will also work on it. The WHAT IF version for Windows will probably run OK on most Windows systems, independent of the hardware. All WHAT IF options have been implemented in the Windows version, except the pull-down menus (that will also be removed from the Linux version before the release of WHAT IF 7.0).