CrystalExplorer allows you to cycle through a number of ways of viewing a disordered structure using,
Ctrl-D Keyboard shortcut (⌘-D on the Mac).For example, in a system with two disordered components the initial display will show both components. By cycling you will be shown each of the components individually and finally each component given separate colors.
Care has to be taken when generating surfaces of disordered structures since their interpretation is more difficult.
There are two main ways to deal with disorder:
Note: In order to handle disorder correctly, the CIF must contain disorder groups as well as appropriate occupancies for all disorder components.
Note: When disorder causes a hydrogen atom to be within bonding distance of two different atoms, Tonto cannot determine which is the correct atom, so the bond length to hydrogen cannot be normalised to standard neutron bond lengths, as is usually the case. This hydrogen atom will not be moved.