[chimerax-users] moving distance labels

[Elaine Meng]

Hello Kwangjun Lee,
You can use the same method to move both types of labels: in the Right Mouse tab of the icon toolbar across the top, you can click the icon that looks like "ATP" with an arrow below it, to assign the "move label" mouse mode to the right mouse button (= trackpad + Alt on Windows, trackpad + command key on Mac).  Then you can click-drag the label with that button to move it to where you want.

<https://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/tools/mousemodes.html>
<https://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/commands/ui.html#mousemode>

Then if you want to change the right mouse assignment back to translation (the default), click the third-from-left icon with up/down/left/right arrows.

I just checked that this works for 3D labels, 2D labels, and distance labels in the 1.4 production release. However, I couldn't get it to work in the current daily build (1.5) so I just now made a bug report for that issue.

I see your original subject was "command question", however, so maybe you only want to use commands?  I think it is harder, but in that case, you can use the "label" command "offset" option.  For example, if your distance pseudobonds model is #2 (see the Models panel to figure out the number)

label #2 offset -1,0,0

<https://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/commands/label.html>
<https://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/commands/label.html#options>

...but that will move all the distance labels at the same time.  To only move one, you would need to Ctrl-click to select the specific distance pseudobond (the dashed line) and then use the command with "sel" as the specifier, e.g.

label sel offset -.4,0,-.2

However, that uses one non-command step, selection by clicking.  If you REALLY only want to use commands, you would have to specify the two atoms that are the endpoints of the distance, e.g. 

label /A:256 at od1/A:319 at o pseudobonds offset -1,.5,.5

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

> On Aug 15, 2022, at 9:48 AM, Kwangjun Lee via ChimeraX-users <chimerax-users at cgl.ucsf.edu> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> How can I adjust the position of the distance label?
> I figured out how to adjust the label for the residues.
> Thanks!
>