Miguel Ortiz-Lombardia wrote:

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Hi,

I'd like to pick an area of a (msms) surface (like with a "lasso" tool) and from that area, select the atoms/residues from which it is built.

I haven't found anything like this in the documentation, so I'm afraid it's not possible. Or is it?

Best regards,

Miguel

I'm afraid that is not currently possible. To make this work, we would need to modify the surface rendering graphics code. However, since we are in the midst of replacing the molecular surface computation code, we are holding off other changes to the surface code. The current molecular surface computation code in Chimera is the MSMS library from Michel Sanner. We are replacing it for a couple different reasons: (1) MSMS fails to generate surfaces for some molecular structures, and (2) we want additional capabilities in our surface computations (e.g., solvent _accessible_ surface as well as solvent _excluded_ surface, surface area, cavity detection, etc.). As part of the replacement process, we are planning to integrate the multiple types of surfaces (isosurfaces from volume rendering, low-resolution surfaces from multiscale modeling, and molecular surfaces) into a single type. This is desirable because there are currently different tools for manipulating different types of surfaces. By integrating them into a single type, we can make these tools work across surfaces generated via different means. So, the bottom line is that we hope to have something for you later this year. Conrad