I’ve recently started using ChimeraX to produce rendered 3D models of DNA nanostructures. I do this through the following process:
- Prepare nanostructure as a PDB file.
- Import this into ChimeraX.
- Arrange visualization settings such as nucleotide representation shape, width etc.
- Export .x3d file into Blender for downstream processing.
However, there is one issue - the 3D models exported by ChimeraX aren’t grouped into individual objects per nucleotide, so I am not able to easily select nucleotides and colour them in according to their type (A, T, G or C). With the older version
of Chimera, these nucleotides are exported as individual objects, but then are given identical names with randomized IDs. This means that setting the nucleotide types is a long manual process of clicking on each resulting nucleotide and naming them individually.
Does anyone know of a way to export a 3D model of a DNA structure which also exports the IDs of each nucleotide? This would greatly speed up the process for me to produce and render a DNA structure.
Many thanks for your help!