Solvating molecules with VMD

To perform MD simulations with NAMD with Charmm ff, I typically use Charmm to build the initial psf/pdb of the protein and then use VMD to solvate it. Now VMD does not like any psf file generated by Charmm. It likes to its own version of psf file. For this one has to first read in a pdb file and read out a psf file. For this the following script is helpful:


package require psfgen
topology ./top_all27_prot_na.inp
segment PROT { pdb xp5helixonXaxis.out.pdb }
coordpdb xp5helixonXaxis.out.pdb PROT
guesscoord
writepsf vmd.psf

package require solvate
solvate vmd.psf xp5helixonXaxis.out.pdb  -o solvate  -s WT -t 15

Useful resource:
http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~villa/dna/