Hi everybody,

in some of the crystal structures I've been working on, solvent-filled channels are present. I would like to address their dimensions - is there a generally accepted method of how to "measure" the channel/pore dimensions especially when the channels/pores are not rectangular? (I am not talking about a physical measurement like gas absorption or mercury porosimetry, it is really just the "size" in the XRD structure like 12x7 Å)

I've seen Cerius² being used (e.g., here: http://yaghi.berkeley.edu/pdfPublications/buildingBlocks.pdf), but that's commercial software I don't currently have access to.

Of course, I can just try to measure (the shortest possible) distances perpendicular to a defined axis, but that seems somewhat unprofessional to me.

Any hints?