: How to plot defects (dislocations and disclinations) in crystals? How to plot dislocations and disclinations in crystals? like the pictures blow (from Chaikin and Lubensky's book Principles of condensed

@Gail6891361

What you really need is a Finite Element Analysis (FEA) application. Not only can the FEA application solve your problem and visualize it. It allows you to somewhat easily solve an arbitrary complex problem for you with some effort.



Image 1: Quick test in Creo, with default meshing. Could be split to your desired grid for more accurate representation.

There are a several free FEA applications or you can use a commercial one (sky is the limit as far as fea application prices go).

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@Becky351

Try at first this. Here Incscape is used without tricks. Comment, can you follow this!











An alternative method due the comments (it's simpler, too)

Copy it by a pen. Do it in Inkscape, because you get consistent lines and errors can be fixed without traces. At first do some preparations


draw a small rectangle, say 8mm x 8mm or 1/3 inch. Think it to be a square in your grids. Give to it a good stroke width and a light, non-black color; cyan or orange is good. Remove the fill. Select that object when it's ready.
Doubleclick pen tool icon to get it's options. Select Style of new objects by clicking "Take from selection" Check the boxes Fill, Stroke in the dialog.
let the snapping be active for paths and nodes.
Import your original image to Inkscape. Scale it so that one crystal error image fits onto your worksheet (beware distorting the aspect ratio, it can be locked by clicking the lock icon at H/W inspecor)
select the image, goto Object > Object properties and click Lock and Set. This prevents your reference to move.


Now it's good to save your work, Save it often; once in 5 minutes because Incscape is famous of its ability to crash often.

Practice fast zooming by holding Ctrl + rotating the mousewheel. Practice also fast panning by holding the spacebar and hovering the mouse.

Take the Pen. Zoom BIG, Draw your grids line by line by clicking a node to every crossing in the image.



NOTE: You can keep the zoom big because you can pan as you draw, only hold the Spacebar.

End the new line segment by double click. Fix any errors without waiting as soon as the line segment is ready, use the Node tool. You can move temporarily one node off a little to be able to position another node under it. Otherwise the snapping prevents the fixing.

Some lines are quite tightly curved. You can respect that curvature by clicking extra nodes as you draw or you can add intermediate nodes afterwards by double-clicking the Node tool. Then move the extra nodes to their best positions.

If you delete (=select a node, press DEL) an intermediate node, the line do not straighten. There pops up the curvature handles of the adjacent nodes. They must be adjusted for the best fit.

A skilled user draws the curves straight away by dragging the node handles for the wanted curvature. This is NOT easy, a beginner does better by drawing polylines (=only clicks at new nodes)

When the grid is drawn, change its stroke to the final color, width and line end style. A rounded cap fits a little better.

Then draw the grey shapes that are the shadings in the middle hole. Remove its stroke and arrange it to the background (Object > Lower to Bottom)

Finally select all and Group.

Save different drawings separately and make a composition when all are ready.

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