[chimerax-users] workflow suggestions

[Elaine Meng]

Hi Joel,
The mouse modes “translate selected” and “rotate selected” are how you would move only a subset of the models in ChimeraX.  Some things you may not know, that could make using these easier:

(1) if nothing is selected, they move all the models… so you don’t have to switch back and forth to the regular “translate” and “rotate”
<http://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/commands/ui.html#functions>

(2) very recently (in the very latest daily builds), if you press “Shift” along with the key assigned to rotation or translation, the mouse mode switches to the other.  Specifically:

rotate <-> translate
rotate selected <-> translate selected

I.e. if one of those modes is assigned to some button, adding shift switches to its partner above.

(3) they can be assigned to any button or button+modifier using the “mousemode” command.  The icons currently only assign to right mouse, as you saw, but perhaps you would rather have them assigned to some button combination so that you don’t have to switch.
<http://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/commands/ui.html#mousemode>

…further, you could assign a function key to a mousemode command that switches the mode, see “functionkey”
<http://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/commands/ui.html#functionkey>

(4) you can also use commands “move” and “turn” with the “models” option to specify moving only certain models.
<http://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/commands/move.html>
<http://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/commands/turn.html>

I hope this helps,
Elaine
-----
Elaine C. Meng, Ph.D.                       
UCSF Chimera(X) team
Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry
University of California, San Francisco

> On Feb 16, 2020, at 4:47 PM, Joel Meyerson <jrm2008 at med.cornell.edu> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> I'm a reasonably experienced Chimera user making the shift to ChimeraX. So far I'm really enjoying it. I'm writing because the biggest challenge I'm having so far is that there doesn’t seem to be anything quite like the "activate" features in the original Chimera Model Panel.
>  
> Are the "activate" features available in ChimeraX, or are there plans to implement them? If not, can you suggest a way to achieve a similar degree of agility for manipulating objects in ChimeraX? So far I have been clicking between Right Mouse modes which does not feel so fluid yet. Perhaps there are keyboard shortcuts or other workflow tricks that you could suggest to improve the feel of navigation. 
> Thanks,
> Joel