Diamond Version 5 Preview Download

This page is the central access point for the download of the version 5 preview of Diamond.

Version 5 Preview has been released on April 28, 2023.

The Diamond 5 Preview is distributed as a self-extracting executable file (Diamond-5-Preview-Setup.exe). It is provided with online-help, a user manual, a tutorial, a small structure type database as well as several sample files. A special version of the Crystallography Open Database (COD), dated April 2021, is available separately here as ZIP file for download.

The preview version contains a special license file that enables full access to all functions but will expire on September 30, 2023.

Please note: The Diamond 5 user manual consists of several HTML files, some of them are not yet completed or contain informations refering to older versions of Diamond. These files are marked as "preliminary". The tutorial file (in the previous Diamond version called "User manual") also still refers to version 4.6 of Diamond. This tutorial is recommended for users without experience with Diamond. In any case, you should read the What's New article, available by the corresponding command in the Help menu.

If you are interested in this Diamond 5 Preview version, we would appreciate very much if you register for our mailing list. Although this is not mandatory for downloading the software from below, we would like to be able to inform you by e-mail when the official 5.0 release and updated versions 5.x have become available.

Download and install Diamond 5 Preview

We recommend to read the file README.TXT before you install DIAMOND. There you will find details about system requirements and instructions for installation.

Please note: Diamond 5 Preview uses a special license file (yourlicense.lic) that works only with this version. Diamond 4 users should not overwrite this license file with the license file that they use with a purchased license of Diamond 4! (License files are not compatible.) 

Readme / Installation Instructions
April 28, 2023

Download Diamond 5.0 Preview (Diamond-5-Preview-Setup.exe)
[70,789,920 bytes]     April 28, 2023

Crystallography Open Database (COD)

A comprehensive version of the "Crystallography Open Database (COD)" is available for the Diamond software, amongst them data from "American Mineralogist Crystal Structure Database" (AMCSD) as well as from International Union of Crystallography" (IUCr) journals.

In this context, we would like to thank Pete Strickland (IUCr), Armel Le Bail (COD) and Bob Downs (AMCSD) for their kind permission to download and distribute their data free-of-charge!

Due to its size, the COD is no longer part of the Diamond installation package. The COD delivered with the preview version and with version 5.0 of Diamond consists of several Diamond database files basing on the April 15, 2021 version of the COD and contains approximately 471,000 entries with a total size of 8.4 GB. Updated COD versions will follow later during version 5.x of Diamond.

If you want to use the COD through the File/Search command of Diamond, you must first download and unpack the Diamond-specific version of the COD (27 DIAMBASE files in a ZIP file) from here:

Download Crystallography Open Database (COD in Diamond 5 format) version 2021-04-15 (COD-D5-2021-04-15.zip)
[(2,207,377,933 bytes]    April 28, 2023

COD installation instructions
The Diamond 5 Preview installer creates a "COD" sub-folder in your Diamond program directory (which is by default "C:\Program Files\Diamond 5" or "C:\Program Files (x86)\Diamond 5"). This contains only a "Readme.txt" file with a short installation remark and a hint to this page. You should place the DIAMBASE files into this "COD" directory. (Note: You need administrator rights to put these files into a folder or sub-folder of the Windows programs directory.)

1. Click on the download link above. This will start downloading the ZIP file into the default folder "Downloads" on your computer. (Alternatively, you can right-click the link and choose the "Save link as" command to choose a different folder.)
2. Extract the DIAMBASE files from the downloaded ZIP file into a temporary directory.
3. Move the DIAMBASE files to the target folder.
4. Diamond automatically recognizes if the DIAMBASE files are completely in the "COD" sub-folder of the Diamond 5 program directory when you start a search with the File/Search dialog.

If you do not want to place the DIAMBASE files into the "COD" sub-folder of the Diamond program directory or have no administrator rights, you can place the files into a different folder. In this case you must tell Diamond where to find the DIAMBASE files:
a) Run the command File -> Search. (This first throws a warning message that the COD files have not been installed or the target folder has not yet been set.)
b) After closing the warning message, the Search Files dialog comes up, where you click on the Search criteria button.
c) In the File Search Options dialog click on the Database path button to choose the folder containing the DIAMBASE files.
Note: The sub-files of the COD are listed in the upper part of the dialog. The sub-files are accessible, if there is no "[n/a]" suffix at the end each.

POV-Ray

Like DIAMOND version 4, the new version 5 can use POV-Ray to create photorealistic pictures. If you would like to do so, please download and install also the POV-Ray software package:

Download POV-Ray (povwin-3.7-agpl3-setup.exe)
[31,273 KByte]  October 28, 2014

Please note:
(1) The POV-Ray editor (to edit, change, render, and debug POV-Ray 3D scene files) uses a different license type and is thus not included in the above mentioned software package. The last step in the installation procedure will point you to a POV-Ray web page where you can download the POV-Ray editor from. We strongly recommend to install this editor, too, even if you do not intend to edit or debug POV-Ray scene files. Otherwise you will receive a prompt whenever Diamond starts a POV-Ray rendering job and the command "Tools/POV-Ray/Launch Environment..." fails or shows an auxiliary POV-Ray window where you cannot edit the POV-Ray scene file.
(2) You should run POV-Ray separately before you make the first POV-Ray rendering job from Diamond. Otherwise Diamond may have trouble locating the POV-Ray executable "pvengine[64].exe" on your hard disk.