[Chimera-users] Open Structural Measurement table

[Elaine Meng]

Hi,
When you click Save on the Distances tool, it saves the measurements as a plain text file that can be viewed in any text editor.  It does not save any special Chimera format that can be read in to re-measure the distances.
<http://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/ContributedSoftware/structuremeas/structuremeas.html#distances>

You would have to look at the file in a text-editor to see which pairs of atoms were involved and re-do the distances one by one the same way you did originally, or create (again in a text-editor) a Chimera command file with “distance” commands, each specifying a pair of atoms.  The file is just plain text with the same commands that could be entered directly, and can be read in with File… Open (name the file ending in .com or .cmd)

For example, I opened 2gbp and created two distance measurements with the mouse, then clicked Save on the Distances tool to save text file containing:
————————————————
Model #0 is 2gbp

Distance information
 1  BGC 310.A O6 <-> ASP 154.A OD1:  5.472
 2  ASP 236.A OD2 <-> BGC 310.A O3:  3.767

[… other lines not shown here …]
————————————————
I could create a command file named something.com containing these two commands (plain text) to re-measure the distances:

distance :310.a at o6 :154.a at od1
distance :236.a at od2 :310.a at o3

After quitting Chimera, then restarting it and reopening the same structure, 2gbp, I could open the command file with File… Open to re-show those distance measurements.

Otherwise (next time) if you really want to preserve the measurements on the structure, with the dashed lines etc. and not just the measurement information, you would need to save the session.
I hope this helps,
Elaine
-----
Elaine C. Meng, Ph.D.
UCSF Chimera(X) team
Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry
University of California, San Francisco

> On Sep 13, 2018, at 3:27 PM, Ayala Carl <ayalacarl14 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> I have been having difficulty opening a previously saved table of measured distances. I cannot open in as any file type listed by chimera and unfortunately I did not save the session that I measured the distances. 
> If I open my models is there a way to impose the distances saved to the opened models?
> Thanks in advance