Hi James,
The symmetry copies of a molecule asymmetric unit can be saved to a
new PDB file using the saveunitcell.py Python script with Chimera.
http://plato.cgl.ucsf.edu/trac/chimera/wiki/Scripts
It uses the CRYST1 record in the PDB file to determine the symmetry
group. Unfortunately as mentioned in the script you need to use
Chimera as the Python interpreter, which you may not be willing to do
-- but you can just call out to the command-line version of Chimera
(also documented in the script) via os.system() or whatnot.
There is also a sym command in Chimera which can generate symmetry
mates from a wide spectrum of possible criteria. A Python script to
call sym is just:
from chimera import runCommand
runCommand("sym <options you want>")
--Eric
Eric Pettersen
UCSF Computer Graphics Lab
http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu
