Hi Thomas, If you are on a non-Windows system, you could try the "neon" command -- this generates a static, shadowed image in which any dashed lines are shown as a series of short cylinders (actually more like medicine capsules since they have rounded ends). The "neon" command is actually built on top of the "conic" command. Both make static images (not interactively rotatable) and share a large number of command-line options, but conic was meant to show CPK or spacefill, while neon extends it to showing tubes and sticks. <http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/UsersGuide/midas/neon.html> <http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/UsersGuide/midas/neon1.html> <http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/UsersGuide/midas/conic.html> <http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/UsersGuide/midas/conic1.html> There are several potential caveats besides the unavailability of neon on Windows: - the distance value is not shown - dashed line style (dot-dash, spacing etc.), background color, lighting directions etc. are not taken directly from the Chimera settings but specified separately... - there are many many options for both conic and neon, and neon reads a "neon.dat" control file I guess the latter is really a double-edged sword, in that it is nice to have so many options, but potentially time-consuming to figure out how to deploy them. As a first stab you could just try the defaults, not specifying any options. I attach two images of a short peptide with distance measurement: image saved the normal way in Chimera and the result of using the command (on Mac): neon -f tiff -o ~/Desktop/junk.tiff -s Or, if you are on Windows it is all moot (sorry!) but perhaps other users would be interested. Elaine ----- Elaine C. Meng, Ph.D. UCSF Computer Graphics Lab (Chimera team) and Babbitt Lab Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry University of California, San Francisco
