Dear Gromacs Users, I was able to achieve a spherical water droplet without periodic boundary conditions (PBC) by changing few parameters in the .mdp files as below:
*minim.mdp:* ; minim.mdp - used as input into grompp to generate em.tpr ; Parameters describing what to do, when to stop and what to save integrator = steep ; Algorithm (steep = steepest descent minimization) emtol = 1000.0 ; Stop minimization when the maximum force < 1000.0 kJ/mol/nm emstep = 0.01 ; Energy step size nsteps = 50000 ; Maximum number of (minimization) steps to perform ; Parameters describing how to find the neighbors of each atom and how to calculate the interactions nstlist = 0 ; Frequency to update the neighbor list and long range forces cutoff-scheme = Group ns_type = simple ; Method to determine neighbor list (simple, grid) rlist = 0.0 ; Cut-off for making neighbor list (short range forces) coulombtype = Cut-off ; Treatment of long range electrostatic interactions rcoulomb = 0.0 ; Short-range electrostatic cut-off rvdw = 0.0 ; Short-range Van der Waals cut-off pbc = no ; Periodic Boundary Conditions (yes/no) *nvt.mdp:* title = OPLS Lysozyme NVT equilibration define = -DPOSRES ; position restrain the protein ; Run parameters integrator = md ; leap-frog integrator nsteps = 50000 ; 2 * 50000 = 100 ps dt = 0.002 ; 2 fs ; Output control nstxout = 100 ; save coordinates every 0.2 ps nstvout = 100 ; save velocities every 0.2 ps nstenergy = 100 ; save energies every 0.2 ps nstlog = 100 ; update log file every 0.2 ps ; Bond parameters continuation = no ; first dynamics run constraint_algorithm = lincs ; holonomic constraints constraints = all-bonds ; all bonds (even heavy atom-H bonds) constrained comm_mode = ANGULAR lincs_iter = 1 ; accuracy of LINCS lincs_order = 4 ; also related to accuracy ; Neighborsearching ns_type = simple ; search neighboring grid cells nstlist = 0 ; 10 fs rlist = 0.0 ; short-range neighborlist cutoff (in nm) rcoulomb = 0.0 ; short-range electrostatic cutoff (in nm) rvdw = 0.0 ; short-range van der Waals cutoff (in nm) verlet-buffer-drift = -1 ; Electrostatics cutoff-scheme = Group coulombtype = Cut-off ; Particle Mesh Ewald for long-range electrostatics pme_order = 4 ; cubic interpolation fourierspacing = 0.16 ; grid spacing for FFT ; Temperature coupling is on tcoupl = V-rescale ; modified Berendsen thermostat tc-grps = Protein Non-Protein ; two coupling groups - more accurate tau_t = 0.1 0.1 ; time constant, in ps ref_t = 300 300 ; reference temperature, one for each group, in K ; Pressure coupling is off pcoupl = no ; no pressure coupling in NVT ; Periodic boundary conditions pbc = no ; 3-D PBC ; Dispersion correction DispCorr = No ; account for cut-off vdW scheme ; Velocity generation gen_vel = yes ; assign velocities from Maxwell distribution gen_temp = 300 ; temperature for Maxwell distribution gen_seed = -1 ; generate a random seed *npt.mdp:* title = OPLS Lysozyme NPT equilibration define = -DPOSRES ; position restrain the protein ; Run parameters integrator = md ; leap-frog integrator nsteps = 50000 ; 2 * 50000 = 100 ps dt = 0.002 ; 2 fs ; Output control nstxout = 500 ; save coordinates every 1.0 ps nstvout = 500 ; save velocities every 1.0 ps nstenergy = 500 ; save energies every 1.0 ps nstlog = 500 ; update log file every 1.0 ps ; Bond parameters continuation = no ; Restarting after NVT constraint_algorithm = lincs ; holonomic constraints constraints = all-bonds ; all bonds (even heavy atom-H bonds) constrained comm_mode = ANGULAR lincs_iter = 1 ; accuracy of LINCS lincs_order = 4 ; also related to accuracy ; Neighborsearching cutoff-scheme = Group ns_type = simple ; search neighboring grid cells nstlist = 0 ; 20 fs, largely irrelevant with Verlet scheme rlist = 0.0 ; short-range neighborlist cutoff (in nm) rcoulomb = 0.0 ; short-range electrostatic cutoff (in nm) rvdw = 0.0 ; short-range van der Waals cutoff (in nm) verlet-buffer-drift = -1 ; Electrostatics coulombtype = Cut-off ; Particle Mesh Ewald for long-range electrostatics pme_order = 4 ; cubic interpolation fourierspacing = 0.16 ; grid spacing for FFT ; Temperature coupling is on tcoupl = V-rescale ; modified Berendsen thermostat tc-grps = Protein Non-Protein ; two coupling groups - more accurate tau_t = 0.1 0.1 ; time constant, in ps ref_t = 300 300 ; reference temperature, one for each group, in K ; Pressure coupling is on pcoupl = No ; Pressure coupling on in NPT pcoupltype = isotropic ; uniform scaling of box vectors tau_p = 2.0 ; time constant, in ps ref_p = 1.0 ; reference pressure, in bar compressibility = 4.5e-5 ; isothermal compressibility of water, bar^-1 refcoord_scaling = com ; Periodic boundary conditions pbc = no ; 3-D PBC ; Dispersion correction DispCorr = No ; account for cut-off vdW scheme ; Velocity generation gen_vel = no ; Velocity generation is off *md.mdp:* title = OPLS Lysozyme MD simulation ; Run parameters integrator = md ; leap-frog integrator nsteps = 500000 ; 2 * 500000 = 1000 ps (1 ns) dt = 0.002 ; 2 fs ; Output control nstxout = 5000 ; save coordinates every 10.0 ps nstvout = 5000 ; save velocities every 10.0 ps nstenergy = 5000 ; save energies every 10.0 ps nstlog = 5000 ; update log file every 10.0 ps nstxout-compressed = 5000 ; save compressed coordinates every 10.0 ps ; nstxout-compressed replaces nstxtcout compressed-x-grps = System ; replaces xtc-grps ; Bond parameters continuation = yes ; Restarting after NPT constraint_algorithm = lincs ; holonomic constraints constraints = all-bonds ; all bonds (even heavy atom-H bonds) constrained comm_mode = ANGULAR lincs_iter = 1 ; accuracy of LINCS lincs_order = 4 ; also related to accuracy ; Neighborsearching cutoff-scheme = Group ns_type = simple ; search neighboring grid cells nstlist = 0 ; 20 fs, largely irrelevant with Verlet scheme rlist = 0.0 ; short-range neighborlist cutoff (in nm) rcoulomb = 0.0 ; short-range electrostatic cutoff (in nm) rvdw = 0.0 ; short-range van der Waals cutoff (in nm) ; Electrostatics coulombtype = Cut-off ; Particle Mesh Ewald for long-range electrostatics pme_order = 4 ; cubic interpolation fourierspacing = 0.16 ; grid spacing for FFT ; Temperature coupling is on tcoupl = V-rescale ; modified Berendsen thermostat tc-grps = Protein Non-Protein ; two coupling groups - more accurate tau_t = 0.1 0.1 ; time constant, in ps ref_t = 300 300 ; reference temperature, one for each group, in K ; Pressure coupling is on pcoupl = no ; Pressure coupling on in NPT pcoupltype = isotropic ; uniform scaling of box vectors tau_p = 2.0 ; time constant, in ps ref_p = 1.0 ; reference pressure, in bar compressibility = 4.5e-5 ; isothermal compressibility of water, bar^-1 ; Periodic boundary conditions pbc = no ; 3-D PBC ; Dispersion correction DispCorr = No ; account for cut-off vdW scheme ; Velocity generation gen_vel = no ; Velocity generation is off However, I am facing the following error: *Fatal error:* *Domain decomposition does not support simple neighbor searching, use grid searching or run with one MPI rank.* I tried adding the '-nt 1' in the command for mdrun but it consumes 2 weeks for a 1 ns simulation since it utilizes only 1 CPU. Is the error occurring because of changes in .mdp file parameters? Is there any other way to make some changes in the mdrun command to make the simulation faster? Thank you in advance. Best regards, Shraddha Parate -- Gromacs Users mailing list * Please search the archive at http://www.gromacs.org/Support/Mailing_Lists/GMX-Users_List before posting! * Can't post? Read http://www.gromacs.org/Support/Mailing_Lists * For (un)subscribe requests visit https://maillist.sys.kth.se/mailman/listinfo/gromacs.org_gmx-users or send a mail to gmx-users-requ...@gromacs.org.