Hello Sneha, Well, according to the error message, the file has a nonstandard header! In other words, it may be a problem with the file format. First make sure you actually downloaded the file as plain text. Otherwise it might have some HTML tags added to it. Then I would just look at the file with a text editor and try deleting parts that don’t look like part of the standard format. There’s a small example file here: <http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/UsersGuide/12123.sph> .. and general description of viewing sphere files in Chimera: <http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/UsersGuide/sphgen.html> To report a problem with a file, you should actually attach that file, otherwise we are just guessing. You could use “Help… Report a Bug” in the Chimera menu and attach a file and include your email address if you want an answer. However, as I mentioned above, this might not be a bug if the file format is simply wrong. I hope this helps, Elaine ----- Elaine C. Meng, Ph.D. UCSF Computer Graphics Lab (Chimera team) and Babbitt Lab Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry University of California, San Francisco On Jul 10, 2015, at 10:39 AM, Sneha Poondru <snehapoondru@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello!

I’m trying to prepare a receptor for dock6, so I downloaded a file (1tvb_.all.sph) from our cluster onto my desktop. However, when I click to open it, I keep getting this error message from Chimera:

non-standard sph header Error while processing /Users/SnehaPoondru/Desktop/Project/1tvb_.all.sph: cannot open file "/Users/SnehaPoondru/Desktop/Project/1tvb_.all.sph": syntax error, line 1832

Any help is appreciated! Thanks! ~Sneha