Dear Hualing,
Thanks for your kind words!

There are options in the "surface" command for gridSpacing and resolution.  Normally if you just use "surface" it will make a molecular surface, but if you use the resolution option, it will calculate a Gaussian surface instead, potentially with lower resolution depending on the value you give.  The gridSpacing option affects both molecular and Gaussian surfaces, and  again you can give a larger value to get fewer vertices.

For a more detailed explanation of these as well as many other options, please see the "surface" command documentation:

<https://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/commands/surface.html>

The above applies to surfaces calculated for atomic structures.  For isosurfaces on density maps, there are options in the "volume" command for controlling the surface mesh:

<https://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/commands/volume.html#dispsurf>

I hope this helps,
Elaine
-----
Elaine C. Meng, Ph.D.                       
UCSF Chimera(X) team
Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry
University of California, San Francisco


> On Aug 29, 2023, at 8:18 AM, HL F via ChimeraX-users <chimerax-users@cgl.ucsf.edu> wrote:
>
> Dear ChimeraX Development Team,
>
> I hope this email finds you well. First and foremost, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude for developing such a powerful and invaluable tool like ChimeraX. Your dedication to providing the scientific community with a free and versatile platform is truly remarkable.
>
> I am writing to inquire about a technical aspect related to exporting 3D models in ChimeraX.  I'm using ChimeraX-1.1.1 to export protein meshes(surface model) into Blender. I've got a problem that the mesh is too smooth which means it has too many vertices. And that makes my Blender run very slow. Is there a way to reduce the subdivision(resolution/vertex number) of the mesh in ChimeraX? Thank you very much!
>
> Looking forward to your reply.
>
> Regards,
> Hualing
> <image.png>