Hi Virginia, Perhaps you could describe what your ultimate goal here is -- there may be an easier way to achieve it than by constructing a custom selector. But in regards to your problem, for the purposes of selector construction the "Existing Selection" isn't what is selected at that instant -- it's what's selected at the time the selector is invoked from Chimera's Select menu. This allows you to build selectors that intersect the peptide backbone with the current selection for example. If you want to make a selector that simply holds what's currently selected, use the Name Selection... entry in Chimera's Select menu. That creates a selector under Named Selections in the Select menu, and will also be remembered in saved sessions. --Eric Eric Pettersen UCSF Computer Graphics Lab pett@cgl.ucsf.edu http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu On Oct 25, 2007, at 2:22 PM, Virginia Pett wrote:

Hello, There is a difficulty with the Selector Construction Panel. I make a selection in the main window, such as chain A or atom @NZ. The Inspect Selection panel shows that I have made a selection. Then in the Selector Construction Panel: Workbench, Load from current. The Status panel shows workbench content: Existing Selection. Then Workbench, Save, as chain A, for example. However, when I go back to the main window, Select, Clear Selection and then Select, chain A, there is nothing selected.

I downloaded the latest version of Chimera for Mac OS X a few days ago (chimera-1.2422-osx_x11.dmg). I’m running it on a PowerBook G4 with Mac OS X (10.4.10). Virginia _____________________________________________________

Virginia B. Pett Professor of Chemistry Department of Chemistry, The College of Wooster 943 College Mall, Wooster, OH 44691 Telephone: 330-263-2114 Fax: 330-263-2386

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