[Chimera-users] Using the modeldisp command

[Eric Pettersen]

On Feb 7, 2012, at 1:07 PM, Forbes J. Burkowski wrote:

> This VRML snippet gives me an array of 100 little cubes. Here's the  
> catch:
>
> On last year's version of Chimera (1.5.3) the script generates the  
> scene
> almost instantaneously. With the current version of Chimera (the  
> January
> release or the Feb. 04 release) the execution is extremely slow.  I am
> running Windows 7 on a machine with 12 GB of RAM and an Intel i7 CPU
> 3.2GHz so I am not lacking for computing power.  One of my students  
> also
> tried this script and reports a similar slow down.

Urg.  You're right; whereas it takes a couple of seconds to open on  
1.5.3, it takes basically forever on 1.6.  I'll be opening a ticket in  
our bug database about this with you on the recipient list so you'll  
know when it is fixed.  I hope it gets fixed in time for the 1.6 final  
version but if not then it will be fixed in 1.6.1 for sure.

> I am also noticing
> that the latest version seems to launch more slowly and takes more  
> time to
> display BIG scenes (consider PDB ID = 1FFK).

Well, this is actually a side effect of the VRML thing.  I hadn't  
anticipated the direct opening of VRML strings when writing the new  
Rapid Access interface.  Consequently, the text of one of the  
"recently opened" buttons is the entirety of the VRML string you  
opened!  It actually only shows the last two curly braces, LOL.  At  
any rate, showing that huge VRML string on the button is causing all  
the slowdown.

I have committed a fix for this latter problem and it will be in the  
next successful build.  If the slowness is bugging you too much to  
wait you could go and edit ~/.chimera/preferences, search for "Rapid  
Access", find the first opening curly brace after it (start of a  
dictionary) and change the 'data history' list to an empty list.

Thanks for reporting this, BTW.

--Eric


                         Eric Pettersen
                         UCSF Computer Graphics Lab
                         http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu


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