OMIT Instruction

OMIT s [-3] 2-theta(lim) [180]


s is a threshold for flagging reflections as 'unobserved'. Note that if no OMIT instruction is given, ALL reflections except those with large negative Fo^2 [i.e. Fo^2 < -3.sigma(Fo^2)] are treated as 'observed'. Unobserved data are not used for least-squares refinement or Fourier calculations, but are retained for the calculation of R-indices based on all data, and may also appear (flagged with an asterisk) in the list of reflections for which Fo^2 and Fc^2 disagree significantly. Internally in the program s is halved and applied to Fo^2, so for positive Fo^2 the test is roughly equivalent to suppressing all reflections with Fo < s * sigma(Fo), as required for consistency with SHELX_76. Note that s may be set to 0 (to suppress reflections with negative Fo^2) or (as in the default setting) to a negative threshold (to suppress very negative Fo^2) which has no equivalent in SHELX_76. An OMIT instruction with a positive s value is NOT ALLOWED in combination with ACTA, because it may introduce a bias in the final refined parameters; individual aberrant reflections may still be suppressed using OMIT h k l, even when ACTA is used.

2-theta(lim) defines a limiting 2-theta above which reflections are totally ignored; they are rejected immediately on reading in. This facility may be used to save computer time in the early stages of structure refinement, and is also sometimes useful for macromolecules, but should not be used without very good reason! The SHEL command may be used to flag reflections as 'unobserved' (but retain them in the data set) above or below particular 2-theta limits.

OMIT followed by atom names but no numbers may be used to calculate an 'omit map' and is described in the section 'Atom Lists ...'.